Truer Words....AlGore, ere ye lis'nin?

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The Age Of Disinformation

by James Spann:

 



     I have been a professional meteorologist for 36 years. Since my debut on television in 1979, I have been an eyewitness to the many changes in technology, society, and how we communicate. I am one who embraces change, and celebrates the higher quality of life we enjoy now thanks to this progress.

But, at the same time, I realize the instant communication platforms we enjoy now do have some negatives that are troubling. Just a few examples in recent days…

I would say hundreds of people have sent this image to me over the past 24 hours via social media.

Comments are attached… like “This is a cloud never seen before in the U.S.”… “can’t you see this is due to government manipulation of the weather from chemtrails”… “no doubt this is a sign of the end of the age”.

     Let’s get real. This is a lenticular cloud. They have always been around, and quite frankly aren’t that unusual (although it is an anomaly to see one away from a mountain range). The one thing that is different today is that almost everyone has a camera phone, and almost everyone shares pictures of weather events. You didn’t see these often in earlier decades because technology didn’t allow it. Lenticular clouds are nothing new. But, yes, they are cool to see.

by Brady Smith; Coconino National Forest.

Saucer cloud over Campbell Mesa Trails. A

relatively common cumulus lenticulus  

No doubt national news media outlets are out of control when it comes to weather coverage, and their idiotic claims find their way to us on a daily basis.



     The Houston flooding is a great example.  We are being told this is “unprecedented”… Houston is “under water”… and it is due to manmade global warming.

      Yes, the flooding in Houston yesterday was severe, and a serious threat to life and property. A genuine weather disaster that has brought on suffering.  But, no, this was not “unprecedented”. Flooding from Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 was more widespread, and flood waters were deeper. There is no comparison. In fact, many circulated this image in recent days, claiming it is “Houston underwater” from the flooding of May 25–26, 2015. The truth is that this image was captured in June 2001 during flooding from Allison.

 

     Flood events in 2009, 2006, 1998, 1994, 1989, 1983, and 1979 brought higher water levels to most of Houston, and there were many very serious flood events before the 1970s.

 

     On the other issue, the entire climate change situation has become politicized, which I hate. Those on the right, and those on the left hang out in “echo chambers”, listening to those with similar world views refusing to believe anything else could be true.

Everyone knows the climate is changing; it always has, and always will. I do not know of a single “climate denier”. I am still waiting to meet one.

     The debate involves the anthropogenic impact, and this is not why I am writing this piece. Let’s just say the Houston flood this week is weather, and not climate, and leave it at that.

I do encourage you to listen to the opposing point of view in the climate debate, but be sure the person you hear admits they can be wrong, and has no financial interest in the issue. Unfortunately, those kind of qualified people are very hard to find these days. It is also hard to find people that discss climate without using the words “neocon” and “libtard”. I honestly can’t stand politics; it is tearing this nation apart.

      Back to my point… many professional meteorologists feel like we are fighting a losing battle when it comes to national media and social media hype and disinformation. They will be sure to let you know that weather events they are reporting on are “unprecedented”, there are “millions and millions in the path”, it is caused by a “monster storm”, and “the worst is yet to come” since these events are becoming more “frequent”.

 

     You will never hear about the low tornado count in recent years, the lack of major hurricane landfalls on U.S. coasts over the past 10 years, or the low number of wildfires this year. It doesn’t fit their story. But, never let facts get in the way of a good story…. there will ALWAYS be a heat wave, flood, wildfire, tornado, tyhpoon, cold wave, and snow storm somewhere. And, trust me, they will find them, and it will probably lead their newscasts. But, users beware....

Reppold House 

1605 San Jacinto

$225 per night plus tax

James Spann

 - AMS certified meteorologist in the media.

 Host of WeatherBrains

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El Zorro sends this stunning piece of film about German work ethic / except on the East side of the Brandenburg Gate

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     El Zorro sent this film, contributed originally by a German adolescent and his family, apparently shortly after the termination of World War II hostilities, being taken in August of 1945.   The film, in a very positive way, is a tribute to the work ethic of the German people...although it is clear that progress was much slower in the    Deutsche Demokratische Republik east of the Brandenburg.

   As a German, this camera operator could make a few moving picture records of the difference between East and West even by August of 1945.  More concern seemed to be exhibited in the direction of building a suitable monument to Uncle Joe, than to advancing the life-condition of the Deutschevolks for those "volks" who were living under the Bear's thumb.
 

    El Zorro is a bit reticent about his work in Cimarron, because it remains still, one of the most premier "living communities" in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and the "engineering the cable placements" involved things about which nobody had ever heard in those days.   Because of his studies and experience in the Air Force...frequently under combat conditions....he melded into this very advanced projection of technology in those days.

    Cimarron is referred to as "Stalag San Pedro" due to the number of multi-millionaire, old-money wealthy people who own one or more homes there, and who are from the city of San Pedro de Garza Garcia, the contiguous city to Monterrey where the maids have masters degrees.   The development is something like "The Villages", and remains a golfing paradise, along with being an idyllic way station in life (especially for people from San Pedro de Garza Garcia).

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Gringo Viejo,

This came to me from a friend who lives in Mission.  He was my boss in McAllen in telco engineering.  He lives in the Cimarron development… a subdivision where I engineered all the cable placements for telephone service (has nothing to do with the message below).

I thought this, below, might be of interest to you in case you ever get to the Mission Int’l Lions Club.   The linkage is at the bottom of this overall transmission.
 

EZ

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This shows what happened with the defeat of the power hungry Nazi Regime.   Destruction!

This video was sent by a friend who was there.

 

Thank you Lion Ron for sending the Video of Berlin 1945.

 

   Yes, when I look at this video I can say our city Offenbach am Main across the river from Frankfurt looked just as bad, those images can never be erased, I was 12 years old.  

 

   I clearly remember, my father died in May of 1942 of poison, a chemical reaction from work. My father's brother Kristian was unable to work, he was ill with Parkinson's disease, the Nazis came to my aunt's house in early 1943 and told her that they have to take him to  a clinic, two weeks later they said that he died and sent her his ashes. In August 1943, we were totally bombed out, we were only able to save our lives; we had nothing but the clothes we were wearing. 

 

   But life is good. I legally emigrated to the United States in October 1952. 

Lion Henry (Heinz), Member of the International Lions Club, Mission, TX  

On Saturday, May 23, 2015 2:20 PM, Ron D'Andrea <rgv99ron@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Lion Henry:

Came across this 7 minute color video - - thought of you

http://twistedsifter.com/videos/remarkable-hd-footage-of-berlin-from-july-1945/

Lion Ron

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Hayes County...San Marcos (County Seat) and Wimberly Will Survive and Prosper: but it will take a few months.

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May 27, 2015

visit our web Site

SPOTLIGHT: Memorial Day Weekend Flood

Source: City of San Marcos Facebook page

The Texas State Alumni Association wants to send our thoughts and Bobcat love to all those affected by the 2015 Memorial Day Weekend Flood.  The floods severely impacted Hays County, including some members of the Texas State University community who suffered loss or damages because of the floodwaters. The University has established a special giving page to collect gifts in support of students, faculty and staff affected by the weather-related events. These funds will be used for clothing or personal-care items, food, study materials, pet boarding, or other immediate needs. Donate to the Bobcats Helping Bobcats Flood Relief Fund » ______________________________________________________________________________



Texas Rising - do we want a silly tele-blip or the Truth?





 

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     We were afraid that we would be right.  The notion that we would have a reasonable treatment of the reality of the period surrounding the establishment of the Republic of Texas seemed laughable at the outset.   It was laughable....save for being a sad commentary about what could be hidden behind the skirts of a place as Sacred as the Alamo and then trotted out as "entertainment" and "historical drama". 

     They fell into the trap that we suspected.   No matter how good the grass was that they were smoking, or if the Tequila and/or Scotch that they were drinking was 100 years old / certified, it cannot make up for the fact that Emily West Morgan was never in the clutches of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.   She was held in a stockade of Negroes for a while and it was assumed by some of the Mexican officers that she must be a slave, but such was not the case.   She was, once again, a free-born mullata and could not have been part of Antonio's shenanigans.   It is very possible that she never saw him nor he, her.
     Some can speculate that the listening to the songs of the Christy Minstrels of the 1850s (later resurrected as the New Christy Minstrels in the late 1960s and 1970s), about the Yellow Rose of Texas might give licence with a wink and a nod to some invention of a story without facts, but it takes away from the grandeur of the moment.

     Next, showing Juan Seguin as a conflicted Latin, having to co-ordinate with people he hated and mistrusted (the Anglo-Saxons)only because he hated Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and the Centralist Forces of Mexico City more is a ridiculous assumption based in a falsity further based on a hope by those who think that Cesar Chavez was anything more than a hood ornament Kachina Doll to represent Alinsky's drive against normal America.

 

 

 

     These are things that they do not know, but with which those of us who have spent much of our literate lives passively and actively studying the issues of that time and of that place are familiar.   It would behove those who toy with the Truth about the Alamo and the events that succeed it, that after San Jacinto, and promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Army of the Republic of Texas, Juan Seguin came back to San Antonio as temporary mayor and Commandant of the military district (the largest in Texas during those times).  This would have been in February, 1837.  Only a person of Juan Seguin`s bruises, valour, and position could have accomplished  such a thing as re-establishing true social and legal order in such a devastated place.

     On the 25th of February, Juan Seguin, with much of the garrison under command, almost all veterans of close combat with the vanquished....but most powerful army at that time in North America....formed up and promptly at four o`clock, as the bells began to toll  an entire Battalion carried and/or accompanied the special coffin in good order to the Church of San Fernando.  Other troops, Texas Rangers, and civil guards, civil authorities, clergy, mourners, friends, family members all accompanied the Battalion and Juan Seguin with the coffin borne before them by a squad of pall bearers.
 

     Arriving at the place where Seguin had extracted remains from the ashes and designated them as those of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett some days before, he stopped the huge column of military and civilian mourners and well-wishers of the quick and the dead.

    Priests threw Holy Water around with abandon, a band played a familiar dirge...although there was and is debate about which one it was, and during an appropriate quiet interlude an officer called for a battalion rifle salute....almost unheard of....never in fact seen by any living American or Mexican before or since, I should believe.

     A Battalion in those days could have been anywhere between 500 to 3,000 men.  In the case of The Republic of Texas at that time and in that condition, it was probably  700 men.   In deliberate and cadenced order all fired....once.....then twice......and then the third volley causing a roar to awaken those departed and those to come.

Seguin spoke in English, gesturing towards the coffin, saying "There are your brothers.   Travis, Bowie, and Crockett and others whose valour places them in the rank of my heroes."   And those were in fact the names inside the lid of the coffin which bore the sample of ashes from the same pile that Seguin had ordered engraved to the underside of the lid of the Coffin.
 

     Supposedly, and this is contested, the remains were interred near the altar of the Church of San Fernando, perhaps the most revered of many churches of any denomination in the Republic of Texas.   All notion by the clerics of lack of qualification, were they Romans? were they Protestants, were they any form of theist or Jew or anything?   The priests did not ask or care. 

     Also, among the native population, principally of the White, upper-caste, Mexican/Spanish group there were those who had sincerely supported the Centralists and who opposed the concept of a Republican Government as envisioned by Zavala and Austin.   They prayed to Seguin for safe-conduct to the Rio Bravo at Laredo, which was rendered to them, their effects, children, servants, and any relative who wished to depart.   They were allowed to take their firearms, animals, and were given an escort to a point mid-way to Laredo, and when out of danger of attack by roving Kickapoo and/or their allies the Comanche' they were allowed to continue without escort.   That number of Centralists and company numbered about 70 persons and 200 animals and 30 wagons and such conveyances.

 

     The volley of the battalion can be heard still to this day by every Texian.  Seguin had a motley history after around 1840...much of it caused by the arrogance of the newly arriving German immigrants who considered themselves to be more like Real Texans than people like Geronimo Navarro, the Gonzalez people, or the Sequins, Zaragozas, and their clan around Goliad who had suffered so much at the hands of Lopez de Santa Anna.  We shall delve into this in coming days.

 

     This is the snarling, bitter, Anglo-hating Seguin pictured in the silly film, Texas Rising.....?   He was far more complicated.  He lived in San Antonio where Latin gentlemen had Anglo wives and to a greater degree Anglo (and we use the identifier "Anglo" fairly loosely) men had Latin wives in considerable melting-pot order.  He gained the confidence of the two most unfriendly-to-Latin men around...William Barrett Travis and Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar.

The depiction of Juan Seguin in the film "Texas Rising" is laughable.    The entire film is laughable....there was no "Texas Red-neck, Hill-Billy, White-trash accent" that would make Hollywood people feel comfortable...by assigning the Texans to their troglodyte status.   Accents in English at the time of the period depicted were much more pronounced and came from British English, New England, Tidewater South, Wicklow Irish,  Scottish, etc.   It would have been difficult for various of the speakers of English to have understood one another unless the conversationalists were really ''plugged-in'' to each other's conversation.   Consider Pygmalion/ My Fair Lady as an example.

 

    We have joined even further into the notion that Texas must be allowed, or must take, an independent road to its destiny before Gabriel`s final call.   We are a motley people, united by philosophy and not race, ethnicity, or even a rigid sect or belief.   We see the face of the Great Yahweh and know him to be the controller at least of our Universe, but we are genuinely yielding to anyone`s posture before his/her Cosmic Source of Order.

    The events of 1836 through 1846 should serve as the pattern of our cut.   The Americans have failed by allowing the vote-buyers (money changers) to ruin an entire race of Americans.  The Americans will not agree that spending more tax money than what is brought in is a sin against natural law and against posterity.  They will not defend the walls that form good neighbours, even as they allow porous borders to permit bad neighbours to pillage and ruin.

     We must gain the power to rule ourselves.   And soon.   Please stayed tuned to-morrow because El Zorro has forwarded some moving pictures of Germany shortly after the collapse during the Summer of 1945.   It will stun a person about how intrepid the Germans are, and how those days foreshadowed the dour and oppressive regimes that would follow in Russian controlled Berlin and throughout eastern Germany.

 

El Gringo Viejo.

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Very Rough Sledding To-day in "Extreme Central Texas"

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     This was a rough day for folks pretty much throughout the centre of the Republic of Texas.   We are talking about from below the already flooded areas south of San Antonio, through two/thirds of the central core of the Country and beyond well into Oklahoma.

 

     In Austin and Round Rock we had children in the middle of a four way tornado attack....not watches, but warnings so close together that they were overlapping.   The water was rising again and small creeks appeared as rampaging medium-size rivers.  Driving from here to there was no certain thing because even high bridges were closed, and some were washed away.

 

     At this writing people are gone, mission, or preparing to attend funerals.   Cd. Villa Acun~a, across from Del Rio, Texas on the Rio Grande had a tornado that managed to kill 10 people, while the death toll in Central Texas has passed a dozen....with many people unaccounted for in Hays County from Kyle, to Wimberly, and San Marcos where El Gringo Viejo, his daughter, his son, and his son-in-law attended and graduated from the University.   Hays County is contiguous and to the south of Travis County, wherein Austin is located.   On the north side is Williamson County and that this DELL Computer Country....Round Rock and Georgetown being the urbs of interest to outsiders.

     Our contributors who live in the middle of Extreme Central Texas went to visit friends this very morning, thinking that things would certainly start to stabilise by that point.  They did stabilise, but to the way they had been for the past two weeks....and in some cases the past two months.  To wit:

   Today was a day of weather drama.

  We met up with our son and his family in Spicewood (1/2 way to Austin on 71 North) for lunch today.  We had some light rain this morning, but nothing to cause concern.  While at the restaurant, cell phone weather alerts started going off everywhere.  That drew our attention to the t.v.'s that were displaying weather alert information.  To our surprise, they were reporting a tornado event from our place back to the west a few miles all the way to Round Mountain.  You know my man--there was no waiting it out at the restaurant--it was charge!  We headed back to the ranch--skirted tornado areas, drove through hail storms, and were stopped and turned back by the Sheriff's Department on the Ranch to Market Road that leads to our place due to flooded low water crossings.
   We then headed to Johnson City so that we could approach the ranch through Stonewall.  The bridge over the Pedernales at  Stonewall is quite a bit higher than the low water crossing on the RR .  When we got to the barn entrance, we started seeing tornado damage to the trees.  You may recall that the Grape Creek crossing is about 100 yards from our barn gate.  Fortunately, we did not encounter any water coming over that crossing.  The next crossing, Spring Creek, had about 1 1/2' of water over the road.  It was a sheet of water about 30' wide and running swiftly.  Our truck is pretty high, so we proceeded across.  At this point we began to see some pretty significant tree damage.  Fortunately, no homes were damaged, including ours, and our ranch appears to have minimal tree damage, but we won't know for sure until we can get out and make a more thorough survey. 

 

Our neighbours at the bottom of Grape Creek Road had a tree fall across their road, so my weather warrior got his backhoe and headed back to their ranch.  After removing the tree, he decided to take the backhoe down to our barn entrance to clear the trees.  It had been less than an hour since we had crossed Grape Creek with no water on the road, and now he found it impassable--the creek was like a raging river.

 

We love having all of the rain, but it has brought with it heartbreak and tragedy for some.

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     That gives a reasonable idea about what about 60 per cent of the population of Texas was putting up with to-day. 
  Our son-in-law forwarded a couple of shots showing the normally placid creek almost adjacent to their home....almost at flood stage.   This scene was repeated throughout the Central to-day as well as several other days during the months of April and May.

    The picture to the left was made by our daughter.  It shows the "puppy-dog's feet" clouds that always mean severe weather is in the offing either there or very nearby.   This time was no different.   The "infrastructure" of almost all this area is A- to A+ so there have been relatively few calamities and casualties considering the severity and endurance of these episodes.   All losses are, certainly, profoundly lamented.   In Hayes County, for instance, there were 300 houses that within a few short hours, simply did not exist anymore;  their pieces are probably 50 miles downstream in some nowhere somewhere.

We shall have more commentary to-morrow.
El Gringo Viejo

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A Union Flag of the period - 1863

To-day. we especially remember Charles Newton, Sergeant, 96th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, mortally wounded at New Salem Church, Virginia on 3 May 1863 facing onslaught of CSA General Longstreet's advance towards a place in Pennsylvania that no one had ever heard of and would probably never remember, called Gettysburg. We also especially remember Isaac Edgar Newton, Corporal, 96th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, who was killed in action while harrassing the rear guard of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of General Robert E. Lee. on or about the day of the first Sunday in August, 1863 as that Army withdrew from the place in Pennsylvania no one had ever heard of and continued its retreat into Virginia. Charles and Edgar Isaac were brothers and also my grandfather's brothers. My grandfather was three years old when he learned that his brothers had gone to be with the Angels.

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This is not "the Flag of the Confederacy"
It is, in fact, the Battle Flag, taken
in to bellicose encounter.

   ALSO we remember and regret the loss of Asa Grant, Captain, 2 Tennessee Cavalry, wounded at Chickamauga and imprisoned at Camp Chase Ohio...died of his wounds and inhumane treatment while a POW five years after the end of the War Between the States. Also we lament the loss of 1st Lieutenant John Neal, Lieutenant H.H.Limbaugh, and others who gave their all for the Southern cause. They are, respectively a gggrandfather and two first cousins-twice removed who died in action or from wounds received in action serving the Confederate Cause.  In all the Neal clan of Winchester, Lewisburg, Tullahoma, and Lynchburg and their blood collaterals and ancestry lost 11 to that Cause, and none ever bought a slave, and only two held slaves....old men who had been inherited and were cared for as family members during their old age until it was their time to dwell among the Angels.

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This is the actual Flag of State for the

Confederate States of America

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We take leave of the OROG community for a while so as to leave them to their own devices and desires for this sombre and noble holiday.

El Gringo Viejo

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