AMAC D-Day Tribute Video

THANK YOU ALL.
   THOSE WHO LIVED.  THOSE WHO WERE
WOUNDED. AND THOSE WHO DIED.
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Ray Charles & Willie Nelson - Seven Spanish Angels - and More on Immigration, Ann Coulter's PMS Oddyssy, Texas Rising, and other things that make me grumpy

 

 


(1)   To begin, the Texas Rising matter has finally been cleared up.  Certain Spanish Angels came to me in a dream, last night.   They told me that my job concerning the Texas Rising stain on history was meeting with all kinds of outcry "up there", and various of the people who were "down there" at the time of the supposed time and place being depicted on "The History Channel" were threatening to come down and set the record straight.   I told the Spanish Angels that we would invest more effort in trying to mark twain the banks and course the bark upon the River Truth.


  Therefore, we begin:

        (a)    The geography is the least of it, but without it, there is no "it" .   So now we are a bit closer to knowing what the meaning of "it" is.  What is depicted as San Antonio and environs would require one to believe that it is in a craggy piedmont, close to mighty, dry-ish mountains.   Then we are told, by stage-set, that what is around the area as we approach Washington on the Brazos, or Velasco, or Harrisburg and San Jacinto and Galvez Town, we are supposed to understand that it is only slightly removed from being a Mojave Desert - Lite.

     San Antonio and Bexar County of The Republic of Texas to-day as then is a moderately wet, roughly forested place, to the west full of springs (it is said a minimum of 1,100) and to its east stretches of boring, verdant, rolling prairie....hilly at times....with hundreds of tiny sloughs and draw, scores and scores of year-round creeks, and a score of huge creeks and medium-sized Rios, whose banks and flood zones are heavily forested....all within the trot and walk of two days horse travel to the east.

     Arriving around places like Schulenberg, and the Czech / Polish country...common annual rainfalls can range from 20 (rare) to 100 inches (rarer).  It all depends on the fronts from the north and the easterly waves and tropical storms from the  Gulf of Mexico.  Common rainfall?   We are looking at a range of 30 inches near the "waist-band" of Texas - the Balcones Escarpment where the limestone, marble, and cedars extend to the west, and where Texas loses 600 feet in elevation as it move to the east.   Rainfall to the East increases as one moves towards Houston, Beaumont, and the Confederate Country of East Texas....changing gradually from 30 to 70 inches per annum.    To the West of San Antonio, very rumpled hilly areas with oak and cedar, beauty and cragginess at every curve and glance....and the East with its jumble of dogwoods, wisterias, pine and oak forests, bogs, sloughs of swampy, muddy backwashes and mystical Spanish-moss draped scenes.

    These are the scenes that ruin life for visitors when one learns that only we Southerners and Texans  know these places as part of our genetic imprimatur and licence of ownership.  The scenes used by the Texas Rising producers, directors, satraps, and dumboes could possibly be in somewhere in the Ruidoso foothills of New Mexico, or perhaps west of Fort Stockton and Pecos, Texas.   It is really hard to identify...as anything Texian.

 

Juan Nepocuceno Almonte
circa - 1862

       (b)  Next, El Gringo Viejo was struck by the scene of General Santa Anna witnessing the cold-blooded execution of survivors of the Alamo encounter.   There were apparently several score of prisoners being sloppily shot down by hapless Mexican infantry,  too dumb to shoot straight.   One Negro man, a combatant (there were no Negro combatants, per se.  Heroes, yes.  But not from combat....but, oddly,  from a greater, and dangerous,  moral  kind of complicated risks and cleavings to responsibility).   General Lopez de Santa Anna noticed that the Negro had only been severely wounded, and was looking wildly around for "Emily Morgan" when finally Lopez de Santa Anna turned to "General" Almonte  (actually a Lt. Colonel, brevet colonel in the real world) and ordered him to finish off the hapless Darkey.    All of this is infuriating, because all of the Negroes performed in a range between and including heroically and craftily, in surviving and being of service...not as slaves....but as human, Christian, and normal people.   One assuaged Lopez de Santa Anna...that Black Man had been a bartender and valet to "important people" and places back in New Orleans, and though free, he feigned being a slave.



     The silly television show has "General Almonte" nodding to Lopez de Santa Anna, then drawing his sabre, then riding over to the Negro in question, and then whacking him to death.

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    "No, no, no.  It your word was a boat, it just wouldn't float...No,no, no."  would say my Granma Mamie.  It is not the way it was.   Granma Mamie could tell without looking when the "whoppers" were afoot....just by the tone of voice of the prevaricators.

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  There were only four to eight "prisoners'' taken at the end of combat at the Alamo.   One Mexican was finally determined to have been a prisoner of the Centralist Army taken by the Texians during the earliest encounters of the siege in February, and he was released.  The others were fallen upon by 'effete' (that is the word used for 'poofies' during those days) officers of Lopez de Santa Anna's ''inner circle''.

   Almonte was not a person of confidence for Lopez de Santa Anna.   He was rumoured to be the son of the priest  Fr. Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon - rather much the fusion of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson for the Mexican Revolution of Independence - and the beautiful Tarascan Indian woman with the name of Brigida Almonte (aristocrat or royalty, there is disagreement, but Brigida was a real. live high born Indian, just like Pocahontas Warren, Duchess of Massachusetts).   His accomplishments, both military, in public service, and in diplomatic service in Europe as well as in New Orleans and Texas made his presence very useful   He is one of the four general  officers and three colonel-level officers that El Gringo Viejo faults for not having arrested Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna for crimes against the honour of Mexico, and for crimes against humanity.

     Several favoured it....but no one pulled the trigger.

    Colonel Juan Nepmuceno Almonte never did what was pictured in the scene showing Almonte putting the Negro to the edge of the sword.   It never happened.   Further, had it happened, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna would not have been there.    It should also be pointed out that because of Almonte's fluency in various languages, the original overture to the Mexican Centralist Army by James Bowie's seconds, which was rejected out of hand, was received by Almonte, and rejected by Almonte.  Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna did not have the nerve, oddly enough, to receive the delegation.   Almonte guaranteed the delegation's safe conduct to and from the tents of the Commandancia.

      Relative importance of a common Mestizo officer in Mexico in 1867?  Well...Almonte was the President of the Regency that officially proclaimed Maximiliano von Hapsburg as the Congressionally Approved Second Emperor of Mexico in 1862.  It was the high-water mark of the Metternich resurgence that stretched all the way across the pond...Max lasted for four years before he was executed by firing squad, under orders by Benito Juarez Garcia, Republican President of Mexico, an act that relegated Mexico to third world status for a long, long time.  The two Imperial General Officers Commanding, Miramon and Mexia, both Mestizo, were also executed alongside Maximilian at those same moments.

     (c)    As a small, but very major matter, Captain Juan Seguin Zaragoza did not learn about the disaster that befell Col. Fannin from an aside conversation while talking about overall War Strategy with General Houston (as shown in Texas Rising).   If anything, it was Houston who was informed by Seguin, Deaf Smith, and various stragglers coming out of the Victoria  area about the disaster of Goliad.   Also, it being a scene shot during the mid-afternoon, Houston would have been in bed and General Somervell would have been the one listening, not talking.   Houston would have been...like Lopez de Santa Anna....pretty much four sheets to the wind.  Houston liked his whiskey and his lithibrium or lithium.....Lopez de Santa Anna liked his ancient brandy, his 100 year old tequila and his cocaine.  To wit:

 

      In the mid-1800s, lithium was proposed as a treatment of uric acid calculi and gout, as uric acid crystals are highly soluble in solutions containing lithium carbonate. This therapy proved ineffective, but lithium was noted to be a highly effective treatment of psychiatric disorders in the late nineteenth century. (Historical Pharmacology Reference Guide)

 

 

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(2)     My of my favourite Wicked Witches of the Good, if at times uselessly abrasive....Ann Coulter has left me in a lurch.   Ann, you are totally right in a two-dimensional way.....but almost totally wrong in a three dimensional way.   The problem is not that we are being run-over by a mass of Dirty Meskins.  We are being run over by a complicated garbage heap of un-enforceable, un-intelligible, convoluted laws that say that if an extra-terrestrial being is pregnant by a Kalobornon from an alternative Universe, the whelped spawn of such a creature would be a Texan if born in a MaryKnoll Sisters - Catholic Charity sponsored midwifery in La Grulla, Texas home or storefront facility.

     As you know, Ann, once that occurs, the baby is a Texian and the mother is shelved into a limbo-land  that wherein it is accepted  says that although she is a femme sole from a foreign nation, continent, Planet, or whatever, with a birthed baby, the baby is a Texan and the mother must be allowed to stay by his/her side, because the mother is the only source of support.

     That bodes well for the stores that treat the Lone Star Card as a form of currency.   It also bodes well for the owners of those stores, the "single mommies" (teehehheeeteeehhee) who "just happened" to whelp while on Texas soil,  because monies are taken from the producers to give to the "Safey Net".   How much?  Up to and including 40,000 to 50,000 USD for a family of one mommy and two to six whelps.   These whelps are approaching a plurality of birthings.  This is women who have no husbands, as opposed to women who have been recently abandoned by death or abandonment by their husbands.

     Women who have illegal alien husbands know that their "husbands" have to be very careful how they access the taxpayer paid or subsidised housing facility where the "babymother" is holding court against the Texian Taxpayer.  Every now and then a case-worker might be checking up on the recipient of the disgorge of the Cornucopia, just to make certain that she is a pobrecita, abandoned babymother.

 

     All of that is true and we have spoken to it a million times in this blog.   The problem is that we did not have this comprehensive abuse of comprehensive social services and safety-net opulence until the 1967 -1969 comprehensive welfare state Trojan Horse vehicle of The Great Society.   The TGS was the grandest, greatest, and biggest, most complicated, most anti-constitutional vote-buying scheme in the history of the United States, and perhaps the world.   To-day, almost 6,000,000,000,000 dollars down the drain, by the same standards used back then, we have the same or a higher percentage of  people in what is referred to in the United States as poverty....and what is seen in the rest of the world as an upper-middle class standard of living.

     One little outfall?   Latin "illegitimacy" rates were around 6% of all live births in 1950 - 1960.   Now....with the Amnesty of the late 1980s and the amplification of everything from WIC to AFDC to Section 8 and a score of other "safety nets" the figure for the Latins is up to nearly 50 per cent.   For ladies of the Black African ancestry we are looking  at nearly 80% in most urban areas and a little less where there are slighter concentrations of Black People.

     The Anglo/Teutonic group and the Latin group is hovering around 30 to 45 per cent during these times. 

 

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   We in Texas are caught in a reality.  Ann is looking at California and her experiences in New Canaan, New York as a young girl....a long, long, long time ago....almost as long as El Zorro and me.   She has seen the invasion Puertorequen~a, and the fall of Brooklyn, Bedford - Stuyvesant, Queens, and The City in general.   The horde of people flooding in to have an anchor baby and life la vida rica did not exist in Texas to our generation.

     El Zorro, El Gringo Viejo, the boss of El Gringo Viej0.....we knew pretty much only these categories of Mexican - Latin.  Remember we were born in 1950 and before.

 

     (1)   Two levels of hootsy-snootsy Spanish colonials.   Rigid, un-imaginative, suspicious, and more Roman Catholic than the Pope.  Generous, attractive, intelligent, and industrious and fiercely independent....each Hacendado an emperor of a small but potent empire known as "haciendas".  They were holders of massive grants of land from the King of Spain, while smaller but significant grants of land by that same Throne, composed the upper sociological tier.
     Then there was the professional class of people who were involved in merchandising, transport, accounting, medicine, tutelage, smithing, and middle management of extensive ranching operations.  They were almost ethnic and attitudinal clones of the highest tiered people.
    They numbered around 15,000 - 17,000 people on both sides (20 miles +/-) of the Rio Bravo (Grande) by the time that the war started between Mexico and the United States.  The majority of the above numbers would have lived in Santa Maria del Refugio (Matamoros), Reynosa, Camargo, Mier, and Revilla (Guerrero Viejo), Palafox, San Ildefonso, and Laredo, all on the south side of said River, save for Laredo.
    Moving away from the Rio Grande...and including populated to semi-populated places in what would become Texas without dispute, there were another 10,000 people of usually Caucasian race of variations of Iberian, Gallic, Latin, Irish, and English ethnicity.

     These groups were outnumbered fairly rapidly and massively  during the opening of colonisation of the Texian wastelands by Americans of various stripes and types looking for a place to plough and fewer complications and regulations.

     During the pre-Republican times and up to and including the Republican period there was considerable interaction and intermarriage between the new arrivals  and the original white grouping.

      Adjacent grouping of the Latin cohort were those from the Monterrey, Nuevo Leon area who frequently had property, cousins, or other interests in the "Otro Lado".  Others came from Monclova and Saltillo and places dominated by those Urban centres in the adjacent State of Coahuila, once in union with Texas.

 

     These are the people that the Anglos and newcomers would say, "Well, we have to remember, they were here before we were." although frequently that was said in an incorrect manner, assuming that all of "them" were here before all of "us"  were here.

 

     Anglo and Angloid entry was pretty much confined to the period of the War with Mexico, 1846 - 1848 and then during the first agricultural period between the end of the War with Mexico and the War Between the States.   Another very large infusion of non-Latin Whites came in during the period from the 1896 through 1930 time frame.  These were people looking for the certain wealth produced by a 360 day growing season and dependable irrigation systems.   The non-Latin, White cohort far overshot the Texas-dwelling, local citizen-type Latin during these times, in spades.  By the 1920 census, the non-Latin White group made up 80% of the population between San Antonio, Del Rio, and Corpus Christi.  White Latins made up the rest, with "trace minerals" of Japanese, Chinese, and Black African making up less than one per cent combined.

 

     The Latin grouping increased with the refugees of the post Imperial period associated with the fall of the Mexican Empire of Maximilian in 1867.   Large bodies of middle and upper socially positioned people moved into and through the Lower Rio Grande Valley...some staying...and other seeking relatives in San Antonio or even Houston and Dallas.   Most of these people had considerable tutelage, some were doctors, others were mercantilists, profressors, musicians, and ranchers.   The next major grouping was the wave of refugees fleeing the direct and indirect effects of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 - 1917.

     Adding onto the 200,000 of these refugees who filtered and flooded over for a decade and a half, there was added another half that number who arrived due to the disorders of the Cristeros War in Mexico during the 1920s.  There were all manners refugees, mainly women...old ladies, widows, children with only a big sister or at times a brother in charge...all others being dead.   There was limited efforts given to documentation....it just did not matter.   The Army was looking for saboteurs, anarchists, bootleggers, and criminal agents.   The Border Patrol, such as it was, served as a scouting adjunct to the United States Army's Mounted Cavalry...until well into the 1930s.

    
     During the Roosevelt Administration, a move began to deport all Mexicans who could not prove nativity or direct relation to a father or mother who was a native born or naturalised American citizen.   Several-score thousand "self-deported" while others went and enrolled in the bracero and later the Foreign War Workers programme that processed thousands of Mexicans into the labour force to make war supplies.   After the Second World War we maintained the Bracero Programme that allowed States to declare labour-shortages in certain specific and usually seasonal-demand fields and recruit Mexicans only to seek eligibility to work for specific periods in the United States.

 

     The bomb went off when it was decided to declare a war on poverty by the Democrats.   This meant a War on Normalcy which has not ended to this point.  Emergency Medical and Food, Fair, free, and subsidised housing, Section 8 etc. and a myriad of programmes and services attracted more and more people, usually relatives of those already here, until the late 1980s when the Amnesty was foisted upon us.   It was at that time all the people who traced their ancestry back before the 1920 point saw the total end of normalcy.  We have more people on public support in the four county Lower Rio Grande Valley than what the total population was in 1960.

 

    SO!  Ann's points are well taken, but the phraseology she uses runs not just the risk, but the certainty of ruining the little known fact that 40% to perhaps, as in the last gubernatorial elections in Texas, as many as 55% of the Latin electorate voted Republican in the Statewide races.   They were all either of the pre-1930 crowd, the true immigrant type, or intermarried.
   This is a very militarist area....quite frankly...and I mean militarist.  The Latin element here and throughout the Republic of Texas are very keen about their honourable military service and by in large it is impressive.

    These people are also the big land holding ranchers with royalties of gas and oil, professionals such as doctors and teachers, skilled blue-collar people, and small business people.

 

     And that is why I strongly concur with much of what Ann says, but, as a fellow New Yorker, I wish she would walk a few miles in my boots so that she could tighten up her rhetoric so that we lose no voters we have while we try to gain more.

 

More Later.

El Gringo Viejo

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See the legal writhing and wrangling the Obamoids will do to keep an unqualified entrant in the United States

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El Zorro, and the Anglican Curmudgeon and your almost humble servant have been pushing this lady's message for several months now.   El Zorro sends her blog linkage and a reminder that all his followers, and mine, and the Anglican Curmudgeon must keep banging away at the million kilowatt dam, like the crazy goat in the Frank Sinatra song.

This came from one of my recent books, “Refugee Resettlement and the Hijra to America” by Ann Corcoran.  She has a blog at https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/.

 

Her diligent work tracks and documents a little known (by most Americans) program that the leftists and especially Obama have been using to assist and protect immigrants without consent and oversight by Congress as was required when it was originally imposed by the Refugee Resettlement act of 1980.

 

Below is a chapter of the book which explains how contractors are used to run the program and funded by us, the taxpayers.

 

Of interest is one of the “contractors” listed below is the “Episcopal Migration Ministries” which receives funding from the government.  There are four more major contractors participating in this money grab on succeeding pages but to go further here would be to copy too much of the book.

 

The very deceptive part of the program is that most of the immigration, hijra, is made up of Muslims.

 

Just thought this might be of interest to you as it was/is to me considering our upbringing in the church.  It is depressing! 

 

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to me

 

Below is a briefing from willamette.edu.  You probably remember my mention of my subscription of such.

 

It is interesting that the state court wanted to deport Mellouli but the Feds did not.  My suspicion is that the suspect is Muslim.  I looked up the name origin and it appears this character is Muslim.  It may be that he indeed is not Muslim; however, the text of the actual filing and subsequent appeal to the SC tiptoes around the origin.

 

The state wants this guy gone and Obama doesn’t.  Further, the precedent set erodes the power of the state and the 10^th Amendment by judicial legislation.   To wit:

 

“(5) Mellouli v. Lynch

Date Filed: June 1, 2015

Case #: 13-1034

Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C.J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Alito, J., joined

Full Text Opinion: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-1034_3dq4.pdf

IMMIGRATION: A lawful alien resident may be deported if convicted of a drug-related state crime only where the drug is a federally regulated substance.

Petitioner plead guilty to a misdemeanor offense under State law for the possession of a drug paraphernalia.  The 'paraphernalia" Petitioner was charged with possessing was a sock in which four unidentified orange tablets was found.  Under 8 U.S.C. §1227(a)(2)(B)(i), a lawful alien may be deported if "convicted of a violation . . .any law or regulation of a State . . . relating to a controlled substance (as defined in section 802 of Title 21).  Section 802, Title 21 defines a controlled substance as any 'drug or other substance' included in one of the five federal schedules. Petitioner's state defines controlled substance as any drug included on its own schedule without reference to the federal statute, including at least nine substances not on the federal schedule.  The immigration court, Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Eighth Circuit all found the Petitioner subject to removal under the statute.  The Court held that the text of the federal "controlled substance" statute must be followed, limiting the definition of "controlled substance" to mean a drug listed in the federal guidelines.  To trigger steps for deportation, an alien must be convicted of possessing a drug or drugs that are identified as a controlled substance on the federal schedule. 

[Summarized by: Jacqueline Leung]”

 

My question is, why did such an insignificant case get kicked up to the Supremes if not a devious motivation?

 

Whatever the case, we have to be vigilant as to what the administration is trying to sneak by us.

 

Z

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Robert E. Lee - Farewell Address - Surrender at Appomattox, 1865

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's time for a conversation about race....If MSNBC chooses the meanings of the words in the debate....then its Adios

   


Yanomami girl at Xidea,

 Brazil.  She also doubles

as a back-up astronaut in

the Brazilian Space

Programme

    The title of this entry say it all.   And....if anyone uses any of these words, phrases, or related concepts.....the game is done.   Dr. Watson can leave his pistol in the drawer of his desk.   Concepts from the left such as gender equality, "gay" for homosexual, equal rights, civil rights, hope, change, progressive, equality, dialogue, centre-city renovation, and let us never forget, issues important to minorities.

    Issues such as, you know, the Negro Weather Report.....something akin to the Zuni and Havasu Drive-home traffic conditions and weather together.

   The announcer on the car radio shouts to his audience, "And now, the Eskimo Wall Street Market Closing reports and financial news.   When that is over," he shouts out cheerily, "we'll return to Tuscan Kitchen for Yanomamis from the Amazon upper basin."
 

       My radio-television conglomerate billion-dollar-a-day company will make certain that we do everything possible to have full-scale diversity and relevance.   So every 30 minute news cycle will have 4,201 hours of  simultaneous, multilingual, same-screen, minority-relevant news, weather, and sports.

     We shall also strive to intersperse an appropriate number of procto-urologically relevant advertisements, along with ads for the stupid-community who think that "first-accident forgiveness" insurance is anything more or less than paying the higher premium for a presumed certainty of employment of the insurance policy by the stupid driver who is a clear and present danger to him/her/jenner/it/ and/or self.

     We simply must "reach out"  to people who can, with a straight face raise their arms, as taught by the Obsolete Media and Al Sharpton, the Muslim Brotherhood (Obama's favourite charity), and drone, "Don't shoot! Hands up!", whatever that means.   We must begin a dialogue with people who are so stupid, vapid, ignorant, or hopelessly lost in a quagmire of illogique and narcissism that they think the only black lives that matter are the thugs, criminals, and degenerates who finally managed to back themselves into that ultimate corner.....where they finally were killed, justifiably or accidentally, by the police or security officers.

Midnight Basketball adding to Global
Warmingcoolingclimatechange and
furthering the unearned profits of the
1% by employing un-necessary power
to lights that prove the un-fairness of
providing to basketball players who
are not blind.  Please note that almost
any bicycle is operated by a "hawk"
whose job it is to inform about un-
marked police units and OG's
encroaching on "our turf".
 

  

 

   Of course, the other 99 per cent of the dead black folks were done in by other black folks, who shot, beat, stabbed, done-run-down, or burned to death with their own used tire, loaded up with kerosene, and hung over a person's neck, a la Queen Mandela, South Africa's mirror-image of (Sir Edmund) Hillary.

    "After all, the mf aint gib me my 40 dollars for the bag...an he tol' me 4:00 yestiddy and he be duh noshow. "
    "Well, yes Mr. Mohammed da' Mankilla....but you killed a human being over a 40 dollar debt?"
    "Shoooa, mf, I always ain't let no one get down by me...I always put'em down fust, mf."

      And, of course, it must be pointed out that the fellow who "put down" the guy who did not pay up his 40 dollars, is a Ph.D. and an associate professor of the School of Studies of Transgendered Minority Men/Women who develop stress brought on by learning that the Giraffe they/he/she/it married was part of a  Lesbian Giraffe Polygamy sect.   They are presently both in a midnight basketball - polygamy - bestiality - cross/re/trans/gendered out-reach programme operated by Al Sharpton down at the new courts that they stole the rims of'n.   Mohammed da' Mankilla has to wake up early to-morrow to greet his graduate level class enrolled in "White Privilege  in Contrast with the True Builders of the Pyramids, the Coliseum, the Arch du Triumph

     Now, can we have a conversation....like trying to figure out why Sandra Fluke wants my daughter and granddaughters to pay for her contraceptives?   We need to have conversations.   Conversation is a word that right-brain-only leftists use when they mean that they want to shout down anything that has not been programmed into them by deranged "professors" gaining incredible salaries....for essentially doing nothing.  That nothing is the same the work that Fidel, Karl, Adolf, and Company did repeatedly, after gaining control of various beautiful, at times magnificent, countries.
    Conversation is a buzzword for "Traditionalists!!!! SHUT UP!!!"

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     We leave the OROGs with this message to tell your friends.  If it is not first recognised that there is nothing that can be done with the vermin-whelp of this generation, then forget it.
      It is necessary that we reach back when there were pictures of Jesus and Moses on the walls of the classrooms.     It is necessary that we march bravely back to that point where each of us had to recite the 23rd Psalm FROM MEMORY in the Fifth Grade.....the preamble to the Constitution in the Sixth Grade FROM MEMORY.....the stupid Gettysburg Address in the 8th Grade (I did that and also General Robert Edward Lee's Farewell Address to the Army of Northern Virginia) both FROM MEMORY!!.


Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia, 10th April 1865.
General Order
No. 9
     After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.
      I need not tell the survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them.
      But feeling that valour and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.
      By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection.
     With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

— R. E. Lee, General, General Order No. 9^[1]

     It should be of interest to military men and women that the overall commander of the main combatant army and the Commander of the Armies of the Confederate States of America at the close of the War, had only issued nine (9) general orders during the four years over which he oversaw much or all of the military activities of the Nation.  It speaks volumes concerning his genius and his ability to move men by his singular presence.   Even Grant stood in his presence until Lee  was seated.

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   These fellows are singing in a language that is now un-recognisable.  It is called, "English".  Their message is overly simplistic.   But it made the least of them about 144,000 dollars before he hit the age of 30 and that was  when a 1957 hard-top convertible Thunderbird with air-conditioning, and a 292 / V-8 would cost about 4,000 USD (and new tires).    They (along with others) were the inspiration for the Invictas back in those days.  That was a group that formed with David McColl in Harlingen, Texas and that would call me up when they  needed a piano/organ guy, every now and then.

 

   El Zorro and I tried to, essentially, take over, another group

led by Lance Smith from Edinburg/Donna, but Lance drove it into the ground before we could commit our sedition.

 

By the way, Billy Jeff wishes that he could play, for real, 1/10th as well as El Zorro on the Saxophone.

 

More later.   We have a lot of things to cover before we go to San Antonio and then down to our little mud hut.

El Gringo Viejo

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We Lament This Borrowing from the Anglican Curmudgeon, but it is necessary

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     We do most heartily bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, including the wholesale lifting of this meticulous accounting of the literal wholesale hijacking of the resources of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America.   Literally millions, upon millions of dollars are being drained into the coffers of attorneys who are paid to harass and combat traditionalist parishes and dioceses, tooth and nail, at every legal corner and procedural wall in hand to hand combat, essentially.

     Other moneys are being used by liberal-left, secular humanist moles in monk's raiment to flood the American landscape with Islamic "refugees", many if not most of whom are un-vetted, and all of whom are inserted on the public and church contribution dime.  This is being done, while simultaneously, legitimate refugees who are Arab Christians, in extreme danger, are denied refuge assistance of even a temporary kind.  In this matter, the Episcopal Church, and all the "apostolic lineage" of churches, as well as various "progressive" Jewish organisations are fully, and knowingly, complicit with official Obama State Department rules and regulations.

 

     Please follow this article, penned by one of, if not the most, accomplished student and observer of Church Law and its interface with the practice of State, Local, and central government Constitutional law in these times.  His brilliance may or may not be traced to the fact that he haveth not a boob-tube in his tent, nor does he comtemplateth the brayings of the popular culture or the Obsolete Press.   I defer at this point to a brief, stunning recently posted article on the ANGLICAN CURMUDGEON.   To wit:

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What Is ECUSA Spending on Lawsuits? (Updated for General Convention 2015)

[WARNING: the following post may be dangerous to one's mental health. The panoply of unbelievably large figures in it may also cause one's eyes to glaze over. For those who cannot wade through it all, here is the bottom line:

The Episcopal Church (USA) has spent, and further committed (in its adopted budgets) to spend, a total of $42,675,466 on suing fellow Christians in the civil and ecclesiastical courts over the first eighteen years of this century. When one adds in the estimated additional amounts spent by individual dioceses on such litigation, the total amount exceeds Sixty Million Dollars.
Can't believe it? Well, then, read on -- you have been warned.]

Since September 2010, when I put up an analysis, based on ECUSA's monthly statements and their annual audited statements through 2009, I have kept track of how much ECUSA and its major dioceses has spent on attorneys' fees and other costs associated with all of the 90 or so lawsuits against former Episcopalians to which it (or one of its dioceses) has been a party. In 2010, it was only 60+ lawsuits, as catalogued here (see pgs. 23-26), but the Church continues to sue everyone who leaves it, whether the law is against it or not. In order to give as complete a picture as possible back then, I also included the latest ECUSA budget projection of legal expenses through the triennium 2010-2012.

One has to realize that ECUSA does not make it easy to discover the amounts it spends on litigation -- the leadership at 815 Second Avenue would obviously prefer that those who sit in the pews every Sunday and contribute their pledges not be aware of just how many millions have been squandered on ECUSA's scorched-earth litigation policy.

I am fully aware that those are fighting words to all those who support the current administration at 815 Second Avenue: "Prove it!" they say. Well, in the course of this post, I intend to do just that. So please suspend your judgment until you have digested the entire piece, and checked out all the links to my sources -- which are uniformly from ECUSA's own published financial statements and official minutes. I am a lifelong Episcopalian myself, and I am utterly ashamed and outraged by what the Presiding Bishop and her cohorts are doing in our Church's name.

The amounts the Church spends due to its litigation policies come in a number of different categories. Not all the categories are shown in the same financial documents. For instance:

The yearly audited financial statements, which are the most accurate source, do not break out "litigation expenses" as a separate category, but instead lump them in with all the other general operating costs of the organization. But what they do disclose are (a) the amount of moneys loaned (not granted outright) to rump dioceses; and (b) the amount of legal out-of-pocket expenses contributed to ECUSA by the Presiding Bishop's Chancellor's law firm, Goodwin Procter.

(Note: While the IRS does not allow lawyers to deduct the value of their services rendered pro bono, it does allow them to deduct out-of-pocket expenses incurred in performing the services -- travel, hotel and meals; telephone, freight, postage and similar amounts. In order to keep track of ECUSA's full legal expenses, these contributed costs must be added back into the totals, or else those totals would appear artificially low in comparison to other corporations incurring similar legal services and related expenses. Moreover, ECUSA includes their amount in its income -- see the auditors' note -- so they have to be part of its expenses, as well.)

The monthly statements of operations, though not audited, are the best source of information for (c) the cost of Title IV proceedings -- at least until recently -- and (d) the amounts paid to Goodwin and Procter over and above their donated services, as well as to local law firms retained in various states by ECUSA.

The minutes of the Executive Council are the best source for (e) the amounts of grants and credit lines extended to the rump dioceses. (The audited financials show only the amounts actually borrowed against credit lines as of the year end; they do not disclose the total amount of credit lines extended.)

The budgets adopted by General Convention and the Executive Council are the best detailed source for actual moneys spent in the past on particular line items, and they are the only source for (f) the  future anticipated legal expenses of the Church.  These are most often wildly understated, and Executive Council is constantly having to revise them upwards.

In September 2010, I had concluded that ECUSA and its Dioceses of Virginia, Los Angeles and San Diego had committed to date a combined total of Twenty-one Million Six Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars ($21,650,000.00) on litigation for the years 2000-2012. Four years later, I revised the total spent  by ECUSA alone (not including any of its dioceses) during that same period to $21,858,714. This number I broke down as follows:

For the Griswold years (2000-2006), the total is somewhat higher than estimated previously, because I found an entry for "Legal Support to Dioceses" paid in calendar 2006 in the amount of $443,519.  The new total is:

TOTAL 2000-2006: $ 1,777,180.00
For the first triennium under Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori (2007-2009):

Title IV Expenses:  $ 1,702,222 -- i.e., almost as much as PB Griswold spent on everything legal!

Litigation Expenses (including contributed expenses): $ 8,392,584
Grants to Sustain Rump Dioceses: $1,200,000

TOTAL 2007-2009: $ 11,294,806.00

For the second Jefferts Schori triennium (2010-2012):

Title IV Expenses: $ 992,921
Litigation Expenses (including contributed expenses): $ 4,933,807
Grants to Sustain Rump Dioceses: $ 575,000
Loans to Rump Dioceses:  $ 2,285,000
TOTAL 2010-2012: $ 8,786,728.00


Jefferts Schori Actual Total, 2007-2012: $ 20,081,534
Plus: Griswold Total, 2000-2006:  $ 1,777,180

GRAND TOTAL, 2000-2012: $ 21,858,714

That amazing number is now historical fact, and does not change. But the totals since 2012 do.

At the time of my 2014 post, I did not have the final, year-end figures for 2013, but now I do. Actual 2013 legal expenses alone (not including contributed expenses) were reported (p.3) at $2,125,008 -- more than $1.1 million over the amount budgeted. (This item includes in-house legal staff support, such as the salary of the Presiding Bishop's Special Assistant for Litigation, Mary Kostel.) To this must be added the amounts of contributed legal expenses, which are disclosed only in the 2013 audited financial statements (p. 11): $386,000. (The Presiding Bishop's Chancellor's law firm, in return for being awarded all of ECUSA's litigation work, gives ECUSA "discounted hourly rates" -- isn't that fine?)

The total thus for 2013, exclusive of grants, loans, and Title IV expenses (which the Treasurer no longer itemizes), comes to $ 2,511,008.00. Now include the $735,000 authorized in grants and loans to just the South Carolina rump diocese in 2013 (after a further $300,000 increase authorized in June), the $785,000 authorized for San Joaquin, plus amounts to other dioceses, and the $270,000 spent on Title IV (per the 2014 budget, line 277), and you reach:

TOTAL LEGAL EXPENSES (ECUSA ALONE) FOR 2013: $4,601,008.

For calendar 2014, ECUSA has reported legal expenses of $1,741,166 -- this time only $526,681 over budget. (Those darn legal expenses! Just cannot budget for them!). Contributed expenses are not known yet, but a safe estimate is $300,000. Add in the 2014 grants and loans to litigating dioceses: a general $500,000 line of credit approved in February 14 (FFM038); a separate loan of $785,000 to the Diocese of San Joaquin approved in June 2014 (FFM050), along with a further $775,000 to be drawn as necessary for the "maintenance of any recovered property"; and $270,245 budgeted for Title IV proceedings (line 277). The total then comes to:

TOTAL LEGAL EXPENSES (ECUSA ALONE) FOR 2014: $4,371,411.

For calendar 2015, we have budget amounts only thus far (which are notoriously underestimated). The budget for legal expenses in 2015 is $1,160,486 (line 346), and for Title IV expenses (line 277) $275,622. The number for legal expenses almost certainly needs to be increased (March 2015 already ran 50% over budget), and we do not have the figures for any of the other components yet in 2015. The safe thing to do is to estimate that the total for 2015 will be something like the average for 2013-2014:

TOTAL LEGAL EXPENSES (ECUSA ALONE; ESTIMATED) FOR 2015: $4,486,210.

This in turn allows us to estimate the total for the last triennium of Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori's term: it comes to $ 13,458,629. Note that the total far exceeds either of the two preceding triennia ($11,294,806 for 2007-2009, and $8,786,728 for 2010-2012). And so, for 2000 through 2015, we have:

Jefferts Schori Total, 2007-2015: $ 33,540,163
Plus: Griswold Total, 2000-2006:  $ 1,777,180

Note the hugely disparate legal expenses under Jefferts Schori, as compared to Bishop Griswold's last six years (there were no litigation expenses during Griswold's first three years) -- an increase of nearly 1,900%. Now do you see what I mean by "scorched-earth litigation policy"?

Together, the two are responsible for the Church's spending the following

GRAND TOTAL, 2000-2015: $ 35,317,343

Just to put that number into perspective, take a look at line 362 in the (2014) budget. It is even larger than the amount as ECUSA budgeted to spend for ALL of its operations in calendar 2013! And we are not done yet.

We have a budget proposed for General Convention to adopt for the next triennium, 2016-2018. There we see (line 346) $3,572,082 proposed for legal expenses, and (line 277) $888,305 for Title IV expenses. Given the inadequacy of the previous budgets to forecast actual amounts, it would be safe to increase the larger amount by 50%, so say: $5,358,123. Then to that total must still be added the (unbudgeted) estimates for loans to litigating dioceses, and for contributed expenses (will the new Presiding Bishop elected in 2015 continue to use David Booth Beers and his law firm, Goodwin Procter, to handle all of ECUSA's litigation?). A good estimate for those numbers, as we have seen, is a round $2 million.

So the total spent and committed to be spent by the Episcopal Church (USA), all on its own, and for the first eighteen years of this century, comes to

TOTAL LEGAL EXPENSES (ECUSA ALONE; ESTIMATED) FOR 2000-2018: $42,675,466.
Note that this total now exceeds the amount budgeted by the Church for all of its operations in 2015 alone ($40.8 million).

And we still are not done. We have to add in the amounts spent by individual dioceses -- Los Angeles, Fort Worth, San Diego, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, etc., etc. Starting with Virginia, we know the Diocese took out a $2 million line of credit, but that sufficed for only the first two years of its protracted litigation. Taking into account interest and the duration of the lawsuit, it is safe to estimate that Virginia alone spent $4 million litigating against former parishes. Los Angeles' total must be comparable. But Fort Worth's litigation is not yet over, and because it has hired several law firms, it is safe to say its budget is the highest of all -- around $6 million. Add another $6 million total for all the many other dioceses in litigation (see the bottom of this page)  and you can easily see how, by the end of 2018, the total spent on litigation-related items within ECUSA will easily be WELL OVER SIXTY MILLION DOLLARS.

In other words, the total estimated amount has trebled since I first estimated it five years ago, and increased by 50% over my estimate just last year. That is an unconscionable waste of non-profit resources. Even taking into account Bishop J. Jon Bruno's (he of the forkèd tongue) announced intention to sell the St. James property for $15 million -- rather than allow the parish for which the Diocese supposedly sued to recover its property to continue to use it -- the amounts recovered in property values to date pale into insignificance compared to the amounts being squandered in seeking to recover them.

And the administration at 815 is becoming less and less transparent in disclosing the waste on this huge scale. No longer do they break out "legal aid to dioceses" or "Title IV expenses" as separate line items in their monthly statements. And why do they not publish the total amounts they expect to be repaid from the dioceses receiving the loans? Is it realistic, for example, to expect the rump Diocese of San Joaquin alone, which is unable to sustain itself on its own, to repay the more than $3 million ECUSA has loaned to it thus far? How does that represent "good stewardship"?

Will no one at the forthcoming General Convention -- House of Bishops, House of Deputies, clergy, or laity -- hold them to account?

Will the bishops and deputies not require each candidate for Presiding Bishop to state clearly his intentions regarding carrying on this waste of the Church's precious resources?

Ultimately, the New York Attorney General is the officer who has the jurisdiction and power to look into the misuse of non-profit assets, and it is high time he did so. After all, at the request of both clergy and laity he invoked his jurisdiction over the scandal involving Treasurer Ellen Cooke, and that involved only a few million dollars: chump change in comparison to what is going on now.

For almost ten years now, the Episcopal Church (USA) has had an out-of-control litigation budget. It is a scandal of ineffable magnitude. It must -- and hopefully soon will -- be brought to a halt.

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     The thing we do urge, actually even recommend strongly is that you as an OROG invest a minute or two in reviewing this article en campus at accurmudgeon.blogspot.com where one can make all kinds of secondary connections to check facts and be otherwise astounded at the State of Things within the Body of Christ.    The above article is physically a bit two-dimensional because it lacks all of the connectivity available on the home-page itself.  On the home-page itself, it becomes a wonderfully cornucopia of linkages.

 

Check it out.   Like El Zorro's more military, journalistic reports it is a different style...but also very worthy of my OROGs.

 

El Gringo Viejo

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