Just being a grumpy old man.....

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    If Jos. A. Banks thinks that El Gringo Viejo thinks that by buying one suit for 250.00 USD that somehow I will receive three FREE!!, then Mr. Banks is a fool for not being able to perceive that I am not a fool.   If this is the pricing technique of Jos. A. Banks or whatever his name is, then apparently he is over-pricing his product.   It is time to look into the marketing and mercadotecnica divisions of the company.

    Anything that is included for "free" is not free if something must be purchased in order to access the supposedly "free" thing(s).   This is clear evidence of the American public being dumbed down to the point that critical thinking is a function of an ever decreasing cohort of the population.

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     This is a fact that carries over into the body politic.   The general body is still capable of succumbing to the notion that the Obsolete Press should be in charge of "helping" us narrow down the selections we might have for election contests.  We noticed how the Democrats howled and rolled on the ground laughing at the "hopelessly out of her league" Witch of Delaware back in 2010.  We remember when even the "correct class" of Republicans were quick to point out that she had "IRS problems" and that she was "not ready for prime time".   So, the people elected a dolt who needs an alarm clock to ring so that he can remember to breathe.....who is a Democrat, of course.

    Now we are being told that Jeb Bush is a "real conservative" and that (Sir Edmund) Hillary is a "moderate" who is connected to the Wall Street Moneypeople.   That's it!!  Let's move on.
    One tired in early 2007, after listening to Barry Soetoro string together a 26 minute assembly of focus group phrases, aimed at reality show patrons and single women aged 19 to 31 who had been told from their earliest days that they were and are "equal".  (Sir Edmund) Hillary had been doing that for 40 years, already, steadily lying her way into every known blind alley and having the Obsolete Press explain the lies and dead bodies and Billy Blunders away as if they were something that just happens.

     The idea that (Sir Edmund) Hillary is a "moderate" (whatever that means) flies in the face of the known facts that she was, is, and always has been a strike-force, anti-American, marxist.   The idea that Jeb Bush is a "conservative" would mean that we would have to believe as well that GHW Bush and GW Bush were also conservatives.   The fact is that all three were and are a form of progressive;   each is a big-government advocate, and each believes that we can apply certain basic business techniques and somehow solve the problems that the New Deal, Square Deal, New Frontier, and Great Society programmes gave us.  To wit:

      Multigenerational welfare dependency.  Total life-subsidy for people aged 17 - 60 for housing, food, medical intervention, electricity, telephone, kindergarten, amounting now to about one third of the population.   The driving out of any Cosmic Supreme Being's presence from the public forum.  The establishment of ever increasing numbers of agencies, bureaus, secretariats of various pointless portfolios.  The subjugation of any local or State prerogatives to central government's demands, regulations, and guidelines.   The "conservative" George W. Bush gave us Chief Justice Mr. Liberal Mayonnaise and PharmaGeezer....AARP endorsed!!

     We have the choice of focus groups.   The first is Dolts who Drool and regurgitate Peter Jennings phrases as though they are original and profound thought.   They are the average, normal Democrat voters.
    The second is another group of informal focus groupers who sit around in the pleasant precincts of the 19th Hole Saloon at the correct El Snootzy Country Club and talk about being fiscally conservative and "reasonable" about social issues.  Of course, they are neither fiscally conservative nor "reasonable" about social issues.

For use in case of
nomination of  "sure-
fire moderate" GOP
Presidential Candidates.

     The guys at the 19th Hole Saloon nod wisely and hone in on that old standby...."We need someone who can appeal to the moderates, because we can't be too far to the left or too far to the Extreme Right   If we don't carry the independents the Democrat base will eat our lunch."
    They nod wisely again and recall the good old days when a piece of white-trash from Arkansas defeated a seated President who had just won and war and had a rebounding economic outlook in 1992.  But of course, that was corrected when another moderate Republican, a war hero, lost when a proven liar and very self-indulgent low-life, anti-military, pro-communist, draft dodger ran against him in 1996.   Those who nominated Senator Dole were inspired by the Whip-Inflation-Now (WIN) buttons that President Gerald Ford, a famous extreme moderate, lost in 1976 to a real dumbo liberal, James Earl Carter, by trying to be a better liberal than James Earl Carter.  For some reason, a lot of Republican voters had to restring their tennis raquets on election day.  Others had to Brasso the doorknobs in the basement.  Others forgot to vote.   Others said things that cannot be published in this family-oriented blog-site.



Fort Marcy Park

     After about the third round of martinis and the usual agreement about how "we have to pass a path to citizenship for the illegal aliens or we'll lose the Hispanic vote for sure,"  there is a lull.  Silence embroideries the echoes of the conversation.   Finally, one of the Wise Ones of the 19th Hole Saloon of the El Snootsy Country Club.....all of them from Ivy League schools and fraternities and exclusive clubs like the Cross-dressing Skulls and Boney-Maroney Klavern are thinking.  "Buy one suit and get three more free.  Have you guys ever thought about that?"

     "Yeah, now that you think about it, it really doesn't make any sense.  Something's wrong with their pricing system"

     "Yeah, like the only time our guys win is when they follow Ronald Reagan's two terms, or when one of us campaigns like a right-wing crazy, Tea Party nutter."

      Silence returns to the darkened 19th Hole Saloon.  Scowls abound.  Finally one guy says, ".....then we really do think Vince Foster didn't commit suicide, but we just can't say what we think and still be moderates. Right?"

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Thanks as always for your time and interest.   More to-morrow and then the day after to-morrow, we shall be heading South in the cold rain.

El Gringo Viejo

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Stunning Image from the Past - Even Afghanistan "could have been".

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    El Zorro, or Tech Sergeant Hathorn, USAF retired, combat veteran, Viet Nam,  two tours, and therefore a qualified commentator on any forum, but especially this one has uncovered what is a veritable trove of quiet photographs that speak their 1,000 words and more.  Some were posted yesterday, and a couple had trouble changing from one place to another.  Little problem.  Here are a couple more, perhaps even a bit more salient.  To wit:

 

Pre-Taliban days in Afghanistan when women enjoyed professional careers,

university education, etc… By mid-90s, the Taliban outlawed employment

and education of women over the age of 8.

Comments by Westerners about the women and people in general
in Afghanistan and Persia (Iran) was about their comeliness and
native intelligence.   That was back in the 1940s and 1950s.
  We've come a long way, baby? 

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Fidel Castro and Malcolm X  -  1960

 

Fidel's expression seems to speak of a possibility that he

was just another dufus, stoned on marijuana.  Malcolm
Little, aka: EL Hajj Malik El Shabazz, or Malcolm X to
his friends, seems puzzled by the White Devil.  It seems
 that he can speak English, after all.   Malcolm X was also
just a regular grand-dad.  His grandson burned down
Malcolm X's widow's house, with her eventually dying
of her injuries after three weeks in a coma.  That boy
was later murdered in a row between homosexual gangs
in Mexico City, where the boy was living.  No body came
to recover his body...until finally the Mexican central
government found an aunt who would take it in New
York City, at the family's estate.  Just a bunch of
regular folks....a murderous dictator and a deranged
"muslim" leader mired in murder and all sorts of
violence.  Duck Dynasty, but different in a way?

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Housecleaning and Commentary: Return to the Quinta, DeBlasio, the Press, anarchy

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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.

Officers snub de Blasio

                    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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A Voice from the Past....Foundation for Reasoned Opinion of the Present

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Mohammedanism -

 “…the civilization of modern Europe might fall,

 as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

EL ZORRO sends another jewel of a commentworthy observation about the human condition in the face of radical muslim insanity. We are faced with this notion that they can tell us that we must accept their lunacy and be tolerant of them, even as they blow up their own mosques and try to kill us.  It is madness.

 

 

IRAN  1970
 

 
 
  
 IRAN  2012
 

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 AFGHANISTAN
 

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 EGYPT (Cairo University) 1959
 

 
 
  
 EGYPT (Cairo University) 2012
 

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a reason to worry!

 

Winston Churchill 1899. "Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world." ===============================================================================================





Winston Churchill  1899.

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This is amazing. Even more amazing is that this hasn't been published long before now.

CHURCHILL ON ISLAM

Unbelievable, but the speech below was written in 1899. (Check Wikipedia - The River War).

The attached short speech from Winston Churchill, was delivered by him in 1899 when he was a young soldier and journalist. It probably sets out the current views of many, but expresses in the wonderful Churchillian turn of phrase and use of the English language, of which he was a past master. 

Sir Winston Churchill was, without doubt, one of the greatest men of the late 19th and 20th centuries. He was a brave young soldier, a brilliant journalist, an extraordinary politician and statesman, a great war leader and British Prime Minister, to whom the Western world must be forever in his debt.

He was a prophet in his own time. He died on 24th January 1965, at the grand old age of 90 and, after a lifetime of service to his country, was accorded a State funeral

_______________________________________________________ 

HERE IS THE SPEECH:

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy,

which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture,

sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the

Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement,

the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to

some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction

of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to

be a great power among men.

 

Individual Muslims may

show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant

and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step;

and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had

vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

Sir Winston Churchill

 

(Source: The River War, first edition, Vol II, pages 248-250 London).

Churchill saw it coming.

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I shall change your name. But how?

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    Some people are beautiful on the outside.  Some are beautiful on the inside.  Some people are intelligent, and it shows just by looking at them.  And, some people have loads of talent.  Here the OROG can stop and take a tank-full of all of the above.  Nuf sed:

 

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Thanks for joining in.  More later.

El Gringo Viejo

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But aren't the Marines terribly Southern? A Yankee intellectual absorbs the truth and speaks it. El Zorro brings it to you....

to nibbic

      nibbic was my nephew.  He was a Marine.  There are many Marines in my family.  nibbic is gone now but when I am touched by words such as these below, I cannot help but think of him.  He was good at being a Marine and we spent hours, just the two of us over a beer or two, talking about the service and what it means to us.  He and I will talk again about service and the bonds that are forever.

    Thank you nibbic, for your service.

 

My Heart on the Line
By Frank Schaeffer
The Washington Post

Before my son became a Marine, I never thought much about who was defending me. Now when I read of the war on terrorism or the coming conflict in Iraq, it cuts to my heart. When I see a picture of a member of our military who has been killed, I read his or her name very carefully. Sometimes I cry.

In 1999, when the barrel-chested Marine recruiter showed up in dress blues and bedazzled my son John, I did not stand in the way. John was headstrong, and he seemed to understand these stern, clean men with straight backs and flawless uniforms. I did not. I live in the Volvo-driving, higher education-worshiping North Shore of Boston. I write novels for a living. I have never served in the military.

 

It had been hard enough sending my two older children off to Georgetown and New York University. John's enlisting was unexpected, so deeply unsettling. I did not relish the prospect of answering the question, "So where is John going to college?" from the parents who were itching to tell me all about how their son or daughter was going to Harvard. At the private high school John attended, no other students were going into the military.

 

"But aren't the Marines terribly Southern?" asked one perplexed mother while standing next to me at the brunch following graduation. "What a waste, he was such a good student," said another parent. One parent (a professor at a nearby and rather famous university) spoke up at a school meeting and suggested that the school should "carefully evaluate what went wrong."

 

When John graduated from three months of boot camp on Parris Island, 3,000 parents and friends were on the parade deck stands. We parents and our Marines not only were of many races but also were representative of many economic classes. Many were poor. Some arrived crammed in the backs of pickups, others by bus. John told me that a lot of parents could not afford the trip.

We in the audience were white and Native American. We were Hispanic, Arab, and African American, and Asian. We were former Marines wearing the scars of battle, or at least baseball caps emblazoned with battles' names. We were Southern whites from Nashville and skinheads from New Jersey, black kids from Cleveland wearing ghetto rags and white ex-cons with ham-hock forearms defaced by jailhouse tattoos. We would not have been mistaken for the educated and well-heeled parents gathered on the lawns of John's private school a half-year before.

 

After graduation one new Marine told John, "Before I was a Marine, if I had ever seen you on my block I would've probably killed you just because you were standing there." This was a serious statement from one of John's good friends, a black ex-gang member from Detroit who, as John said, "would die for me now, just like I'd die for him."

 

My son has connected me to my country in a way that I was too selfish and insular to experience before. I feel closer to the waitress at our local diner than to some of my oldest friends. She has two sons in the Corps. They are facing the same dangers as my boy. When the guy who fixes my car asks me how John is doing, I know he means it. His younger brother is in the Navy.

 

Why were I and the other parents at my son's private school so surprised by his choice? During World War II, the sons and daughters of the most powerful and educated families did their bit. If the idea of the immorality of the Vietnam War was the only reason those lucky enough to go to college dodged the draft, why did we not encourage our children to volunteer for military service once that war was done?

 

Have we wealthy and educated Americans all become pacifists? Is the world a safe place? Or have we just gotten used to having somebody else defend us? What is the future of our democracy when the sons and daughters of the janitors at our elite universities are far more likely to be put in harm's way than are any of the students whose dorms their parents clean?

I feel shame because it took my son's joining the Marine Corps to make me take notice of who is defending me. I feel hope because perhaps my son is part of a future "greatest generation." As the storm clouds of war gather, at least I know that I can look the men and women in uniform, in the eye. My son is one of them. He is the best I have to offer. He is my heart.