COMING UP FOR DEPARTURE TIME - We begin leaving a potpourri of thoughts.....

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    These various points all have their roots firmly planted in the soil of understanding and misunderstanding.   The use, overuse, and indiscriminate use of words....in the shoddy approach to reaching a conclusion by non-critical thought and imprecise expression....weighs upon this mediocre writer.   Inferior intellectual processes, and incorrect notions about the meanings and origins of words dog even the best of us and those who have the best intentions.

     (1)   You are a bad person because you are a racist and because we are all immigrants.   You are a racist because you say bad things about immigrants who do not look like you.

     To begin, most of the people who are coming across the borders of the United States, and certainly of Texas without benefit of necessary paperwork and entry permits are definitively NOT immigrants.   They are aliens....persons not citizens of the country in which they find themselves..and they are therefore illegal.  Illegal Aliens....not immigrants.

       An immigrant is a person who interns according to the permissions and  conditions of the nation receiving that immigrant.   He or she is known as a legal alien which is a lot better and healthier than being an illegal alien.

         Therefore, when we are invaded by people who chose to not abide by the law and they arrive especially with the intent to whelp on American soil so as to have a cause that justifies being allowed to remain in the country because one's infant daughter or son needs her or his mother nearby at such a time, we are not being invaded by immigrants.   We are being invaded by parasitic organisms  who have found the promised land of 35,000 dollars worth of support simply by whelping one.   Texas has become unwilling now to issue birth certificates to without identification of any kind.

     Those of you who think you are doing wonderful things by going to the "immigrant emegency care centres" with money, food, clothes and the like might feel really good about helping someone who is downtrodden.   The fact is, however, that many of the same people who are coming over here have been or continue to be involved in on-going criminal activity.   One learns as he/she deals with the "immigrants" and their "already here children'' that they are a sullen bunch.   There is little or no gratitude expressed for the free goodies they are receiving.   They frequently openly complain about the clothes, food, shoes, underwear, women's necessities, toiletries, and even money they are given.   They make it plain that there are two realities.  One, everything back in Honduras or El Salvador was better....and two, everything  in Texas is garbage....and more had been expected.

       This message is mixed into the Queen for a Day tales about how bad things are in Honduras and El Salvador.   One has a hard time keeping it straight.  The Roman Catholic parishes and agencies have specialists who "provide care" and help the"immigrants" make it to their next destination (why?).  They speak of the "immigrants" as if they are a special people and we are blessed to have them among us.   But in the bus station at McAllen, armed with their free goodies, free money, gifts from people they do not know, nor five a damn about....the "immigrants" freely talk about what a dump Texas is and how much worse they have been treated as compared to what they had expected.   They openly express resentment that so-and-so "got" more and better "stuff" than the complainant.  "I have three children and I am pregnant, and she only had two.   So why did they give her 600 dollars and me only 390 dollars?"

    These people are not immigrants...and they should not...must not be confused with the bulk of the Latin population that was invested in this country before 1965. Frankly, most of the illegal aliens who are here right now are a net positive group....but that margin shrinks daily.   The criminal element, as a percentage of the universe of illegal aliens is increasing rapidly, on an hourly and daily basis, especially those originating from El Salvador,  Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras.    We have addressed the absurdity of the notion that O'Reilly can say that "....over 230 people have been murdered in the last 6 years by 'undocumented immigrants'. 

         As we repeat that the actual figure of people killed feloniously over that time is much closer to 1.2 / day.    And they are not immigrants.  They are illegal aliens.

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(2)   Next we have the word "hero".   My FOX News people repeatedly referred to a nice woman, a store proprietrix, who went forth and knocked out the window of a motorcar because a two-year old had been encountered in the vehicle, drenched in sweat.....at the very point of heat prostration and/or stroke.   Her body temperature was 104 degrees, even some minutes after her liberation from the oven that was her mother's auto.

     The lady who owned the stored was repeatedly called a Hero.   If in fact she had been qualified for such a title it would have been more properly ''Heroine", because of her gender....which some people still have, without  doubt.

     But Hero or Heroine, it is required to expose oneself to almost certain or certain serious injury or even death without regard to such consequences when involved in the saving or another human's life or risk of very serious injury.    The word "Hero" was used, even yesterday, when one of our Barbies referred to a Copper who had stopped his patrol and gotten down on the sidewalk with a gaggle of nicely presented and civilized pre-teen boys.   They had one of their bicycles in intensive care, due to a slipped chain.

     Because the Police Patrolman stopped and put the chain on and made the adjustments necessary for it to stay on, our Bimbo referred to him as a Hero on three or four more effusive segments.   No...not hero, Señorita Bimbo.  You are a nice girl...but the policeman was a Good Samaritan...he was noble...he was not "too good" to get down and really help what to the boys seemed to be a major disaster.   He was, simply, a good man going out of his way to do a good thing.

     Last year, maybe he was a hero....perhaps three months from now, he will be called upon to be a hero.   But last week sometime, depending when the phone-video was made.....he was just that guy that stopped and made everything perfect for four boys he did not know....just because he could.  'Nuf Sed, and Dun.

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(3)     The UBS Bank and (Sir Edmund) Hillary.   Flabbergasting.  Billy Jeff receives 1.6 million dollars in "speaking fees'' from the Union Bank of Switzerland, as well as other considerations to (Sir Edmund) Hillary herself that ran into seven figures for the Clinton's 'global initiative'.   This is after the State Department decided to "help" the Union Bank of Scotland avoid compliance with certain demands being made by various investigations into the nature of confidential accounts by foreign leaders and "important" personalities.   Among these could be the billionaire leaders of the "poor" such as the estate of Yassir Arafat, the Castro Brothers of Cuba, and  various of such ilk.....including, some say,  Marc Rich...the "investment analyst" who made off with a third of a billion dollars of other folks' money back in 1990.

     Were these two....(Sir Edmund) Hillary and Billy Jeff Blythe....to have been Republicans, the piles of license plates would never have been finished over at the Department of Corrections.

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     We  have a couple of more entries to-morrow, and then we'll be heading South for a few weeks.

El Gringo Viejo

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Last Chance Samoon.....

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This is the last time before a couple of years from that we can celebrate a real, live Blue Moon.    Who knows, we may never have a chance to see if the bleu cheese on the Moon tastes different from what we have down here.

El Gringo Viejo

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Enough reason to never vote for Jeb.....so sad.....

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Recent interview with Bloomberg Financial News

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) acknowledges human activity contributes to climate change but cautioned against actions that would harm the U.S. economy. In written answers to Bloomberg BNA, Bush said the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan is “irresponsible and ineffective” and “oversteps state authority.” He also tells Bloomberg BNA reporter Anthony Adragna that phasing out the renewable fuel standard “over time” is the “proper thing to do.” Bush, who served as Florida governor from 1999 to 2007, also called approving the proposed Keystone XL pipeline a “no brainer.” Bloomberg BNA has reached out to all presidential campaigns and will publish other substantive responses in the days ahead. 

Bloomberg BNA:Is climate change occurring? If so, does human activity significantly contribute to it?

Bush: The climate is changing; I don’t think anybody can argue it’s not. Human activity has contributed to it. I think we have a responsibility to adapt to what the possibilities are without destroying our economy, without hollowing out our industrial core. 

I think it’s appropriate to recognize this and invest in the proper research to find solutions over the long haul but not be alarmists about it. We should not say the end is near, not deindustrialize the country, not create barriers for higher growth, not just totally obliterate family budgets, which some on the left advocate by saying we should raise the price of energy so high that renewables then become viable. 

U.S. emissions of greenhouse gasses are down to the same levels emitted in the mid-1990s, even though we have 50 million more people. A big reason for this success is the energy revolution which was created by American ingenuity—not federal regulations. 

Bloomberg BNA:Should the Keystone XL pipeline be approved?

Bush: Yes. Construction of the Keystone pipeline is a no brainer. It moves us toward energy independence and creates jobs. The President’s politically motivated veto of the pipeline is an example of how this administration supports policies that suppress economic growth.

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Dear Jeb:

     Global warming begins with the rising of the sun.   If it is climate change that you are trying to scare the hell out of the children about, try telling them that there have been thousands of climate changes during the existence of the planet Earth.   Tell them about the coal deposits in the Antarctic.

     If it is the intensity of the numerous storms and hurricanes that we are suffering, try the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.

       Please spare us.  You do not know the difference between Pacific water layer inversion and the aurora borealis.

Sheeeeesh!!

El Gringo Viejo

PAGE TWO - MITOFSKY: The Bad Boys

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    As with the "most admired" , there are five top finishers in the category of ''historical villains" of Mexico.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna           10.3%

Porfirio Diaz                                          8.5

Victoriano Huerta                               3.7

Francisco (Pancho) Villa                  1.3

Hernan Cortez                                      1.0

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     This list of miscreants is equally complicated.  There are twenty-five per cent of the respondents who brought up the top five.   Notice that the percentages fall rapidly from a little over 10% down to slightly more than one per cent.   That means that over three-quarters of the respondents named people who did not make it up to the  1% level.  Talk about a Chinese fire-drill in a movie theatre.

      But, please take note.  At least one of every ten Mexicans say that the worst of the worst was  Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.   It was not only the losing of a war that he had already won by relaxing his guard against a force nowhere near as large or demonstrably capable as his army.   It had to do as well with the depredations by Santa Anna of the States of Zacatecas and to a lesser extent, Durango.   It had to do with the merciless subjugation of the Yucatan Peninsula....all of this related directly or indirectly to the issues surrounding the Constitucion de 1824, that Santa Anna had once supported, then eschewed when it was time to be Supreme Ruler.

     It is also that these Mexicans know that Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna essentially blunted the southward extension of the American Army outside of Saltillo during the Mexican War with the United States in 1848 (actually the victory belonged to two subordinate field commanders, including Gen. Pedro Ampudia).   They also know that he came towards Mexico City finally amassing a force of some say 80,000 effectives including various national guard units worthy of the name (others say 40,000 - 50,000 would have been more accurate).

     Whichever figure would have been a significant number of troops, and with other elements that could be brought up from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec it could have spelled disaster to an American force that was much smaller and essentially trapped in Mexico City.   Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, however did not attack or even make a bellicose gesture.  His obvious intention was to come in to Mexico City after the departure of the Gringos with a large force, and assume the presidential throne again.

     Lopez de Santa Anna was something very similar to the Clintons.  Thoroughly corrupt, brutally violent, unimpeded by concerns about morality or criminality, mendacious in the extreme, and wholly self-consumed.   The people finally tired of him after a few more minor episodes of hopeful pseudo-grandeur and he was exiled.   He lived in New York City for a time, and then was relegated to the saloons along the harbour and plaza promenades of La Habana de Cuba.   He returned late in life to a dingy apartment in downtown Mexico City, where he died in the cold, forgotten and un-missed.

     The OROG will remember that Porfirio Diaz was on the "good list" coming in at 3%.   He scored much higher on the ''bad list", almost three times more saying that Porfirio was a bad thing for Mexico.  He had a good twenty-year run at being essentially a re-elected dictator.  He re-established law and order, albeit with an iron hand, that caught innocents and misdemeanours, who received the same harsh punishments as the numerous bandits and highwaymen.   He was also accused of "allowing Mexico to become the Mother of Foreigners and step-mother of Mexicans".   This was because of the massive influx of rail, steel, precious metals, glass, liquor and beer, agricultural production that was provoked by British, German, Japanese, French, and other foreign investment.   America was about in third place among the nations in the world making fortunes and building a huge middle class among the Mexicans.

     Another favourite quote of the day, attributed to Porfirio Diaz was the famous line,"Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States."  At the time, it is said, he was showing off the final stages of the building of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, to this day a stunning theatre with a Tiffany glass curtain one-third the size of a football field...curtain being worth perhaps ten million dollars.   As the five-score Italians master marble finishers were winding up their work, they may have heard Diaz make that statement to a delegation of Japanese businessmen.   Some of those later had something to do with the establishment of a beer company that has since become something called "Corona"....the original effort began in the 1890s under the still produced label of "Estrella", long since folded into the Grupo Modelo in the 1920s and now, lamentably, owned by Anhauser-Busch and Hienekins consortia...a Brazilian / Belgian concern that carefully isolates its Mexican business to the local market, and then to the export of Corona to over 150 countries, Texas included.

     Diaz was "overthrown" by an "election".   The elections of 1910 resulted in an absurd vote count, something like 2,000,000 to 134....I forget the precise numbers....and the loser promptly declared that Sufragio Efectivo / NO Re-eleccion!!! would be the unconditional condition for the removal of Don Porfirio from the Presidential Palace.   After some considerable warfare for about one year, Francisco I Madero came in triumphal entry to Mexico City, accompanied by the not-so-rag-tag armies that had defeated a pretty good military organization.   Diaz was given a deluxe train-ride to Vera Cruz and then was placed on a steamer first to Cuba, and then to Spain, where he died.   There is a movement that began not long ago, to repatriate the remains of Porfirio to Mexico, as a way of recognising that he had done far more good than damage during his quarter century of ruling the country with an iron hand.

     Also, suffice it to say that "Sufragio Efectivo'' for women did not happen until after 1952, and as in the case of the Unite States, it solved all the problems at that time and everything has been perfect since that time...just like in the United States.

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     As with the previous entry, anyone wishing an early definition of the other personalities not discussed can request such information, given in my own way.  These fellows will be analysed during coming days and weeks in any regard, along with other commentary regarding El Chapo and such things.

We shall return to-morrow.   Thanks as usual for your time and interest.

El Gringo Viejo

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Mexican Heroes and Villains - the Mitofsky Survey sorts them out

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     Before we bring the OROG community opinion, fact, or conjecture about Mexico, please understand that Mexico is a place where one walks into a saloon and takes a poll about who the most important person in Mexican history is, and with ten people present, the poll renders 35 persons as "most important".    While this tale is a bit over-stated, there is some truth to it, due to the Mexican proclivity to try to not offend.

       One of the attitudinal surgery and political preference survey companies that we have come to rely upon is the highly respected Mitofsky Survey.   They do constant analysis, and their work on major local and State races has been remarkable over the years.   Their analysis of the Presidential races has been stunning.   So, when other work, more academic and/or commercial, is done, we also stuff that in the old pipe and smoke it.

      Sometimes, readers here will have to endure El Gringo Viejo making a declaratory and, with a flourish of the universal sweep of his left hand and arm,  state a fact as simply being true because he says so.   We apologise for such conceit, but we do submit that those suppositions also come from very much study and very much experience with, about, within, and concerning facts and conjecture about Mexico.

     One of the things that Mexicans will argue and discuss ad infinitum is whether or not this or that villain or hero was a villain or a hero.  It never ends.   But so that the OROG will know, the last Mitofsky survey about such things did reveal the dichotomy, the dynamic polemic, and even the somewhat schizophrenic evaluation of important personages in Mexico's past.

     We launch into a painless set of examples by first informing the readership that we did a pretty fair analysis of this data, below, yesterday.  We also put the graphics directly on the screed....but the graphics from Mitofsky disappeared during the day, thereby ruining the point of the article.  So, everything was, stupidly, deleted in a spate of infantile frustration on my part.   However, this is such a good, interesting, and elucidating set of figures that I know it will (a) vindicate my stated assumptions and facts on this blog, and (b) give those OROGs and other who are interested in advancing their understanding of a nation as complicated as Mexico another few bricks to build their wall of knowledge.   To wit:

HEROES

Benito Juarez Garcia                                  18.9%

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla                         14.2

Fransciso (Pancho) Villa                            7.3

Emiliano Zapata                                            6.0

Porfirio Diaz                                                    3.0

     As we total up these figures, it comes up to about 50% of the total respondents.   Other could have named Lazaro Cardenas, the "Great Expropriator" who established the Mexican National oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos - PEMEX, thereby miring Mexico in a sloth-pit of socialism that has endured until even these days.   Mexico is climbing out of that oil, gas, and petro-chemical pit finally and wondrous things are not going to happen...they are already occurring, as an avalanche of technology, professionalism, and competition.  But now, the lustre is gone from Cardenas....his son, Cuautemoc Cardenas drove the name into the ground with several losing efforts at becoming President, and PEMEX looking better with each step towards privatization does not help the ancient image of Lazaro Cardenas.    Same with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador...another constant candidate for President or something, at one time thought of as an icon, but after a few months of blocking the main plaza in Mexico City and "occupying" about thirty blocks of the most attractive and heavily travelled boulevard in Latin America....his lustre also dulled.   None of those personalities polled as much as one per cent. 

     We shall study Benito Juarez, since he is the leader of those most admired.  From the point of view of El Gringo Viejo, he was a grumpy old man at a young age.   He hated the same people who made him a great political and legal thinker.   He was a full-blooded Zapotec Indian, from the wildest mountains of east central Oaxaca State in the south of Mexico.   Because of evidence of advanced intelligence, he was forwarded by his family and religious workers to the care of a really fine academy in the city of Oaxaca run by cloistered sisters of a remarkable convent.   As a child of the outlying areas, he was accommodated by a well-to-do family, pretty much as an adoptee.

     To his credit, he was adamant and ardent about that in which he believed.  He became an eloquent voice in the issues supported by the Reformers.  That was the liberal group....filled with prototypical international socialists, haters of organised  religion, haters of the wealthy, mockers of the traditions, and ardent enemies of hard money.  
  He essentially wrote (this is somewhat but not convincingly refuted by some historians) the ultra-democratic Constitucion de 1857 that for all practical purposes expropriated the Roman Catholic Church out of existence in Mexico, as well as major portions of lands that had been considered communitarian by the indigenous peoples...Otomi, Tarascan, Tlaxcalan, Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, Huichole, Huastec, Totonac, and other nations.

     While some (in the opinion of this writer), if not most, of the lands that had been awarded by the Throne during the colonial period probably should have been "re-awarded" in some manner, stripping the wealthy of their ranching and very fine production of tropical fruits, corn, scores of fine vegetable and cotton and hennequin plantations would have been a disaster for Mexico as a nation.   And, please to remember, in those days...the 1850s...the "nation" of Mexico was very much five to seven separate entities....more if the Indian nations were to be treated as the entities they actually were.

     In almost all large cities in Mexico there is a semi-rotunda of columns with a statue of Juarez centre'd in front, and these monuments are placed there by the Masons to commemorate their "Great and liberal reformer".   Juarez's birthday is a national holiday, and the day of his death the flags are fixed at half-mast.

     Benito Juarez was a Scottish Rite Mason, because all liberal leaders in Mexico were of that order.   It saved Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna from the firing squad or noose in the moments after the Battle of San Jacinto, for instance, when he identified himself as a Mason to Samuel Houston.  Of course, Lopez de Santa Anna had ceased being a "liberal" leader three or four re-inventions of his persona before meeting Houston.
    The difference between the common Mason and Benito  was that Juarez was obfuscative when it came to accepting, as all Masons must,  that there is a Supreme Cosmic Force and Intelligent Entity.  One can be a Jew, Muslim, Christian of any sort, Buddhist, Shintoist, Hindu, etc. but belief upon and in The Supreme Being is fundamental in Masonic canon.  Juarez is not known for his fielty to that point.

     To me, Juarez was as self-consumed as one of our favourite female Presidential candidates.  He was chased out of the Presidency by conservative and Church interests, who gained favour from the corpus populi due to the anarchy that broke out during the clumsy implementation of the above cited Constitucion.  The Conservatives went to Europe and essentially begged for the loan of a monarch.  The Hapsburg House was brought into the deal, with the King of Belgium and the important backing of Napoleon III and the Bishop of Rome (Pope).   It was arranged that a very popular, dashing, Arch-Duke...brother to King Franz Josef, king of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bohemia.  Franz Josef took the opportunity to rid himself of his more popular brother, and to give that brother a "real live Empire" with a real live throne and a Palace and soldiers with uniforms fit for any opera.  (Please obtain the books, The Crown of Mexico, Joan Haslip,  and  The Cactus Throne.  the author's name escapes me at this moment).
     Maximilian and his Belgian Empress Carlotta came into Mexico in 1864 and did a fair to middling job as Emperor.  Once things started running better, however, Max decided to literally go bird-watching and butterfly collecting in the South of Mexico, while the Republican counter-revolution was welling up in the North.   Long story short, Maximilian went to assume personal command of the Imperial Army in Queretaro, and after a prolonged siege and considerable loss of life, the Republicans forces won the day and the War.   In fairly short order Maximilian was shot before a firing squad, as were his two generals, Miramar and Mexia.   As an aside it should be pointed out that Max's two theatre level generals were racially Mestizo, while all of the "Indian President's" field commanders were White and Roman Catholic.

     My further opinion of Juarez is tempered by the fact that he was willing to sell every Mexican's birthright in order to raised the funds that were needed to re-install himself into the Presidency.  He offered both Abraham Lincoln (with whom he communicated frequently) and later Andrew Johnson territory in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec for the purpose of building a "Panama Canal".   Lincoln was enthralled with the idea and even  commented that it would be a good place to send the "emancipated" slaves and other Negroes "because they are better adapted to such climates".  Very enlightened, our Father Abraham...and our national hero, Benito.
       The story is told about an Italian onyx and marble stone finisher, working on the incredible Palacio de Bellas Artes during the regime of Porfirio Diaz, during the 1880s.   During the quiet times in the evenings the Mexicans at his favorite saloon would talk about the Great Presidente Benito.  Very impressed by these tales of patriotism, democracy. and loyalty to cause, the Italian returned to Italy and repeated these tales, especially to his brother.  In due course, the time came for the brother's wife to be delivered, several years later...and the brother dutifully named his baby after this inspiring Hero of the People.
"The Christian name of this child, Mr. Mussolini?"

"Benito," he responded to the priest at the baptism.

      But this is neither here nor there.  In politics in Mexico as in the United States of America perception is more important than fact.

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     The number two fellow is Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, also known as the Father of Mexico...and as the person who "Pronounced" the Revolution for Independence of Mexico from Spain on 15 September 1810 at 23:00 hours, from the belfry of his parish church in the community of Dolores, Guanajuato.  While Hidalgo was killed not so long after this act, he is the one who put into motion that irresistible force (Mexico) that finally destroyed the immovable object (Spain).

    On all these other folks cited as Heroic, we shall comment a bit more at a later moment.   Many, many books have been written about all of them.   They deserved all the study that has been given their personalities and quirks and motives.

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This afternoon, the good Lord willing and the Devil not objecting, I shall delve into the "Bad Boys" a bit.

El Gringo Viejo

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Another newsflash comes in from a favoured OROG - Breaking news response by El Gringo Viejo

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Daniel Snyder, owner of the NFL Redskins, has announced that the team is dropping the word "Washington" from the team name and will henceforth be simply known as "The Redskins".   It was reported that he finds that the word 'Washington' imparts a negative, immoral image of corruption, cheating, and lying, and is not a fitting role model for young fans of football.

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BREAKING NEWS:

     THE OROG community will be pleased to note that El Gringo Viejo is contemplating a hostile take-over, and is recruiting investors to join him in this attempt to assume control of the NFL team presently playing in or near the city of Washington, District of Colombia.

     Upon the gathering of a minimum of 400 billion Yankee dollars, we shall immediately move to buy at a fair and generous price any shares that the present holder(s) might wish to release.

      We shall immediately comply with the wishes of the LFBTSEWGHHHRESD community and all groups seeking social justice and equal distribution of talent and wealth.  We are especially mindful of the need to show respect to all groups up to and including the Native American Male Lesbian Mermaids and Bartenders.

      In keeping with this objective we are going to name the team after that last remaining group that can be insulted, spat upon, despised, loathed, and ridiculed.   Therefore, the name of the team, upon our purchase will be -

THE POTOMAC PALEFACES

     Thank you all for your kind attention.   Please contact Fleesum, Cruk, and Shyster Law Firm at 1 - 900 - BR - 549 for the details of the buy-out offer.

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