Repost about Los Arrierros

Saturday, 3 November 2012

Story told by an Old Man About Another Old Man's Story

      There was a noble old man, by the name of Agustin Salinas, who was my father's mayordomo in charge of the day to day issues of our citrus grove care business and general  farming activity back in the days when north of McAllen meant   "way out in the country".  Don Agustin would at times refer to certain roads in Mexico as "caminos burros". We thought he meant that they were crummy roads or that they had been used by arrierros in their deliveries or whatever. Later, he and my father explained that during the building of the new modern paved roads (starting in the 1930s), there were always big city engineers who would come out and plan and design and really work up a good attack at getting over this or that mountain range.

      Then the rustics would show up to request work on the highway, and ask about the overall plan and schedule. The smart Mexico City engineers would say, " In a couple of weeks we'll have all our plans drawn and then about a week after that we need to start excavating."

 An arrierro with his remuda de burros.   El Gringo Viejo

has seen this scene countless times in the mountainous

parts of rural Mexico.   While the artist might be a slight

bit generous with the quality of the animals and the  fine

hat and attire....we add quickly...Not much.   The remudas

were frequently fine, and the men were, although rustic

quite highly regarded, usually preenish with well trimmed

mustachios, and very fine hats during market days.

      Then the rustics would say, "But why sen~or, do you plan with the papers? The Burros, they know the route that you want."

       After much laughing and hooting and howling, the engineers would say, "How is that possible?  You are all just a bunch of dumb, rural, Mexican Indians. You know nothing about engineering such a difficult transit, and yet you confide in Burros. jajaaajjaaa jajaaajjaaaa."

      The the Indians said,"Sen~ores, do you want this road to go from here to Mitlalchitepec?"

     "Yes, of course, that is the only pass that can be used to build the paved highway through to San Lorenzo." responded the engineers.

     "But Sen~ores, if you want to have a highway for trucks to San Lorenzo, you have to use the Camino del Burro. Please take your trucks and load the Burros and us upon them, and take the Burros and us to San Benavidez*. Then you can follow us back to here and then you will know the route you must take to Mitlalchitepec."

     The Indians seemed sincere, and the distance wasn't that far, so they loaded up the eight or nine mares and two jacks and six Zapotec Indians and drove them about 16 miles to San Lorenzo on the old unserviceable road.    The Mexico City professionals and their Gringo sub-contractor smiled knowingly and thought they were being very accommodating to the rustics by entertaining their foolishness as though their idea had any merit.

      After an hour and a half they arrived and unloaded their living cargo. The Zapotec rustics set about organising the return, calling loudly and sharply,"Arre! Arre! Maria, Arre! Consuelo....Arre tu!! Napoleon. Arre!...and off they went. "Hasta la casa, sonsas! hasta la casa!!! Arre!  (getty-up! Maria!!  Getty-up Consuelo...getty-up!! Get thee up!!  Napoleon, getty-up!! "Until the home, silly girls!! Until the home!! getty-up!)

     The burros began to canter into the chapparral, weaving here and there, but cantering fairly slowly all the while, just fast enough to where the men had to walk a bit briskly to keep up. The engineers followed, having sent the truck back around.    They had been going for about an hour when the engineers said, "When does this end?  Are we going to camp out here overnight?"

      The Indians laughed, and pointed to the summit just ahead, about 300 yards away. "We have arrived. Just over the 'ceja' (crest).    And then we are there."

     "You Indians are either lost or lying, because we have only been walking for an hour, and we have only covered 2 miles at the most."

      But about that time three burro colts came running up to meet their returning mothers, a soon after that the entire party arrived and looked  down where they had left, by truck, about 3 hours ago.    It was, indeed, a two-mile walk back, and it was almost totally level ground except for one 400 yard stretch of a slight incline.

The new paved highway to San Lorenzo was built where the donkeys had told them to build it. 

(and yes, there really is a Mitlalchitepec  [I believe it means "Corn field full of (weeds) (wild flowers) of the mountain" in Nahuatl/Zapotec...in Oaxaca.])

     And that was one of many, many stories from Agustin Salinas that kept me spell-bound from age 0 - 6....a long, long time ago in a never never land on the Mexican border.  His stories all turned out to be true, or at least reasonable understandings of what he knew to be the truth.

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* Of course there is no "San Benavidez"...Benavidez is a Portuguese - Sephardic Jew surname not uncommon among western Iberian Peninsulars.   This is kind of a joke I trade with my elder brother who is in a higher place, tuning harmonicas and tubas for the Angels.

(Excerpted from email exchange with an OROG, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan in forward areas and who is something of a son/nephew/brother figure to El Gringo Viejo, and who was a chum  of EGV's daughter and a member of her graduating class in High School.  The original email was amended, editted, and smoothed out a bit, and made more accurate in some minor detail.

     We had been talking about things, and then the topic veered into horses [I think because he knows that my father was a "real live" horse cavalry trooper back in the late 1920s and early 1930s.]  So, I signed off this email to him with, " Thanks for your observations. Sometimes they bring back memories.")

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Pitiable Governess....and such a sad thing to squander the affection of so many to please so few

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     Your golden coach has turned into a pumpkin, Madam Governess.   You rose to a peak when you became the Tea Party favourite when running for the position of Governor of the State of South Carolina.  You kept in tow the mossback Republicans and erstwhile conservatives and melded a solid majority.   You have been a somewhat reasonably good governess.

     Then, there was a horrid murder committed by a deranged white man who was the product of the system.  What system?   A boy acts up in class, seems to be always in a state of agitation, is mischievous, acts the clown in class, then lo and behold, he winds up in the Nurse's Station of General Foghorn Elementary School in Bug Scuffle, South Carolina.

    He then listens while the nurse and the lazy or male-hating teacher suggest to the parents that Jimmy needs to see a doctor in order to obtain the medication that will be necessary for limiting his "hyperactivity".    Jimmy goes to the doctor and that medical professional prescribes, during the coming years. a battery of psychotropic drugs.

      Jimmy becomes a Zombie, wandering through life with a dull glazy stare.  He begins to brood, instead of riding his bicycle up and down the six blocks where he lives 200 times in one afternoon while singing "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog" at the top of his lungs.   He used to have a "B" average in school, but by that time he is "ready'' to graduate from high school, he is in special classes and his averages are not even kept.

     He has made "friends" with boys of his own kind.   They make fun of him, because his Maid and Governess was Aunt Mahalia, a Negro woman who was the 4th most important person in Bug Scuffle, Black or White, a  small but important city in South Carolina.    The call him "nigger-lover" and suggest that Aunt Mahalia is actually his mother or grandmother.  Three or four dumboes do their work on Jimmy.   This is bad, because Jimmy wants to belong to something and the boys who did their work are all sons of white-trash who belong to an essentially inoperative anachronism known as the Ku Klux Klan.

     Jimmy winds up going to meetings of the ten or twelve white-trash whose business it is to hate people who were born.   Born to people who determined for the baby what the baby would be.   Jew, Catholic, Negro, whatever.  They mirrored, of course, the high-brow intellectuals of the 1915 - 1960 period who desired the elimination of those categories from the human race, especially in America.   Who believed such things?  Woodrow Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, Robert Byrd, Margaret Sanger, and almost all "progressives" and Prohibitionists, the first cousins of the Ku Klux Klan and the American National Socialist Party.

     So Jimmy walks into a prestigious, mainly Negro Baptist Church in Charleston one night, and finds a Bible study group composed of a bunch of folks who could probably teach at the Ph.d level at any Divinity School of any Seminary or University.   White folks are always welcomed at that neighborhood and somewhat intentionally Black Church.   It's a Southern thing...and you have to be Southern to understand it.  This Church serves, at times, as a catharsis for folks in sadness and crisis.   Many White Southerners will go "back pew" to a Black Church to absorb the music and purifying words of strong sermons in lieu of paying a "therapist".   The Spirituals and strong, purifying words are known to cure all kinds of emotional and even physiological injury.    Yes.   Part of the mystique of the South is that many White Folks think that many Black Folks have a telephone connection with a clearer connection to the Trinity.   This "knowledge" is the difference between Klanners (a small minority) and Confederates (a huge majority). 

     So, to take down a flag in order to absolve so interior defect in your own conscience, Madam Governess means that you are ignorant of the actual nature of what transpired and you have no interest in learning.   My family lost 5 dead in Confederate military service.   While the Reconstruction measures hanged the commander of Andersonville POW detention, no one answered to the thousands who died during or shortly after their internment at Camp Chase, Ohio.

     My people did not own slaves save for two or three very elderly who were willed by last testament and who refused manumission.   Further I have, as do many Southerners, blood of the Blue that was wasted in the effort to put back together what Mr. Lincoln wrent asunder.   My grandfather lost two brothers to Confederate arms.   One was lost to the advance of Longstreet's advance near New Salem, Virginia on 3 May 1863.   The other was lost, harassing the rear guard of Bobbie Lee's main body as he retreated in good order from some place called Getty's Burg, Pennsylvania.   Those Union heroes, brothers, were with the Pennsylvania 96th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry.

     And this was being done by an Army commanded by a General who owned Slaves fighting an Army whose general did not own Slaves.  Which was which?

This is probably the best flag to fly in formal

and political terms.  The other banner is a

war banner.   A pronouncement of battle.

Both are appropriate for their deployment

     And this was done during a war in which the wife of one president threw ashtrays and such at her handmaiden, screeching that that woman (she was a Negress) was part of what was responsible for the death of her brother-in-law, a Confederate cavalry officer;   while the wife of the other president literally adopts a young slave child by the name of Jim Limber, because she and various ladies, black and white, witnessed a Negro man (a major slave-owner) beating the child in full view, on a public street in Richmond.  The ladies threw themselves and their massive skirts, +with maternal fervour over the nine-year-old child, and the wife of the President of the Confederation then took the child in hand.   She incorporates him into the household as a true child of the family....being advised that there is no adoption in Virginia at that time, she is advised by a judge that he be taken as a charge  and folded into the family (also very extra-legal)....and this child takes the table and bed, and becomes the prime bud of Jefferson Davis's eldest son for the duration.   Jim Limber.

   Flag that you struck was the wrong flag, admittedly.   Many preferred the political, formal flag of the Confederacy as a small reminder of a peculiar time in American History.   The bellicose Battle Flag....Stars and Bars...has a special place in terms of honouring the Confederate military.   But the appropriate flag, for where it was displayed, was and is the political banner.

     Also, please understand, Madam Governess, that two Indian Nations declared war against the Union at that time, the Choctaw and the Cherokee.  They flew a flag similar to the one above with the names of their Nations emblazoned on the base of the banner.   Only one side had the only Mexican/Spanish General officer in the War....only one side had Jews serving at Secretary of State or Treasury....only one side had French/Spanish/Catholic general at four-star general command.....only one side had 1,100 Jews serving as political executives, i.e. mayors, country/parish commissioners, country judges for instance. To wit:

(drawn from academic sources of high repute)

     After the Fort Sumter incident seven Indian Nations officially allied with the Confederate States of America. Those nations were the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creek, the Seminole, the Shawnee and the Seneca. 

     The Indian Nations came from the Oklahoma Territory, which is where they had been driven to during the infamous "Trail of Tears." Cherokee chieftain John Ross, in a proclamation announcing the formation of an alliance with the Confederate States of America on June 19, 1861, stated, "The probabilities are, that the next few days will witness the most momentous developments in the history of the continent. Of one result we feel assured, and that is of the final success of our great and glorious cause, and of the eventual defeat and humiliation of our vaunting enemies."

      The most well known leader to come from the Indian nations was Stand Watie. Watie was a prominent man in the Cherokee nation and intensely Southern in sentiment. He was born in the Cherokee Nation of Georgia in 1806. He attended mission school, became a planter and published a Cherokee newspaper. He was a leading member of the faction that supported Cherokee resettlement in the West, and signed the Treaty of Echota in 1835 that led to the Cherokee removal to Indian Territory (Oklahoma).

     From the beginning of the war efforts made by Ben McCulloch and Albert Pike to secure for the Confederacy the alliance of the tribes of the Indian Territory. Stand Watie and others of his class were anxious to form this alliance, but John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokees, hesitated. After the decisive victory of the Confederates at Wilson's Creek, the party represented by Watie succeeded in persuading Ross to join the South. Before that time General McCulloch had employed some of the Cherokees, and Stand Watie, whom he had appointed colonel, to assist in protecting the northern borders of the Cherokees from the raids of the "Jayhawkers" of Kansas. 

     When the Cherokees joined the South they offered the Confederate government a regiment. This offer was accepted, and in October, 1861, the Cherokee Mounted Rifles regiment was officially part of the Confederate Army with Stand Watie commissioned as colonel. Over the next three years Watie's command engaged in numerous raids, small actions, and skirmishes in the Indian Territory and surrounding areas. General Watie's guerrilla tactics inflicted heavy damage and loss of life on Union troops and supply trains.

     General Watie was one of four pure or almost pure-blooded Indians to achieve the rank of General within the Confederate military.   Union Indian (formal members of tribe or nation)  generals or officers....?   Zero.
      The Confederacy had far more pensioned for service to the this or that State who were coloured than did the Union.   All those who served under command of military authority....combatant and close combat support, meaning the sawyers, wrights, smiths, cooks, musicians, valets, tack and beast tenders, and combat personnel who were Negro received their pensions beginning primarily in the late 1880s.   The most maligned Confederate General, Nathan Bedford Forrest had a Praetorian Guard of his slaves of whom he requested that they join him at the beginning of the War Between the States.   All who were of age and ability to serve stepped forward.   He told them that their formal letters of manumission were already drawn up, and upon victory those letters would be delivered.  As the War went on, Forrest delivered the letters without condition, and every former slave stayed.   Amazingly, although all went through the worst of the worst combat, none was severely wounded nor mortally wounded.   One was blown off'n his mount by a cannon-launched bomb (howitzer?) and had an ear injury that caused him to lose his equilibrium.   He was once listed as a deserter until he was found and it was seen what his problem was.

     And on and on, Madam Governess.   So, you throw me and my people under the bus and spit upon the graves of my ancestors.   You have a shallow understanding of the nature of the ridiculous "peculiar institution".  You have no understanding of the facts of the issues surround the War Between the States, choosing to cleave to the notion that it was Slave-owners versus the sainted Father Abraham who wished to emancipate the slaves from their chains.
     Like you, Father Abraham was just another charlatan, thinking and stating publicly how convenient it would be to be able to send large groups of Negroes to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to dig a canal before the French could do it along the northern Isthmus of Colombia (later Panama').   Why?  Because in the words of Father Abraham, "The Negro is more suited to working in the tropics".

     Remember, one of your idols, Margaret Sanger, addressed the women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan, twice, during their national convention, endorsing their opinions about the control and elimination or expulsion of the inferior races.   You genuinely do not want to know what Margaret Sanger would have done to you and your family, had she and her huge group of effete northern and/or British and German, upper-class, intellectual Fabian Socialist madmen managed to achieve all of her objectives.

     Now you lecture me and mine about why we should wish to discriminate against people who want to chop my head and my family's heads off?  Will you personally assure and guarantee that you will filter all the Moslem hordes who are running from the hell holes of their own creation that they will not set up their miserable Sharia Law hell holes here, and begin their honour killings here, as they are required to do?  I am more intelligent and discerning than you, and I cannot protect you from such a fate.   How can a charlatan fraud such as you protect my granddaughters?

     Madam Governess, I tire of speaking to the deaf and showing to the blind.  You are and forever will be a charlatan, a chameleon, and a deceiver.  I supported you, and you squandered that fielty in order to please the secular humanist re-writers of history.   May the curse of your happiness forever bring you sadness.


El Gringo Viejo....

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Corporate Board Rooms determine profits and wages? Wage depression caused by board rooms?

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The State of Denial harangue last night was full of the old demagoguery being delivered from a teleprompter with the voice of a person who is trying to do the up-lifting sermon of a fervent rural Baptist Black Pastor.  The problem, of course, is that the Pastor normally is speaking in the Tongue of Truth from the Word, and Barry is mouthing meaningless words, meant to deceive, drawn from the pen of Valerie Jarrett and placed upon a demonic machine known as Barry's Teleprompter.

     We were especially drawn to the comments....delivered with a rising volume and intensity.....while zombie-dolts in the Democrat caucus were giving tepid applause (and the Republicans sat by politely, but without any approving gesture, thankfully) concerning wage growth.   The speaker reminded one and all that lack of wage growth is not caused by people on food stamps, but  rather by decisions made in the board rooms of corporation.   According to Barry, wages and "quarterly profit and loss statements" are determined in the board room.

     Barry knows better, of course.   Many are the board rooms that have been populated by dumboes who failed to remember that profits and wages of a company are determined by market response to the product that business produces, first and foremost.

     The most successful businesses are run by board rooms that do certain things.  To Wit:

(1)  Hire a competent CEO

(2) Constantly evaluate the product, and its relevance to changes in market                   demand.

(3)  Make certain that the "pay package" for all employees and executives (wages, pension plans, health and life insurance, social allowances such as family leave,  vacation, etc.) keeps productive people inside the company.

(4)   Stay abreast of possible new technology that can be developed or bought.

     There are many other reasons for wage suppression.   At times technology removes the need for certain types of labour.  People then are set adrift and must find similar, equivalent, or alternate types of employment.  Sometimes self-retraining is necessary but the involved individual chooses to opt out of the labour market.
    Sometimes people decide to opt out of the labour market and to establish their own independent business, at times providing blue-collar skill service/product, or white collar service / product such as computer repair or web-site construction, etc.
      Many who tire of looking for work might decide to accept anything and begin at the low-rung on the ladder.   We have a relative in the family who successfully raised the boys and then became an empty nester.  Her husband is a trucker, and she obtained a position at a nearby, very large store.  Within a year, she had been promoted twice, and was making double the entry pay.  They have the world's most deluxe single wide, and seventeen acres of one of the most pleasant scenes of Texas that a person might imagine, along with ponds, creeks, horses, and everything.

AS FOR OBAMA  - The entire speech last night was the death rattle of a pompous pretender.  He will become increasingly imperial and autocratic as his days draw nigh.  He is a marxist, America-hating narcissist, who considers his will and self to be superior to the Concept of a Republic.....under God.....of,by, and for the people.

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     True wage depression is caused by having an oversupply for the jobs that are to be had.  There are fewer jobs to be had because many of the industrial positions have been automated for the sake of efficiency.  It does not behoove a company to hire slobby, lazy union people for 72.50 / hour to bolt bumpers onto vehicles....and to do that job poorly.  The competitive edge is lost, and the product will not sell because it will, of necessity, be overpriced.
     Union labour is the bane of productive effectiveness and efficiency.   It also is difficult to justify paying 249 dollars per day for having a mushroom's uncle fit a steering wheel onto a steering column 428 times a day with a 67% accuracy rate....and then having to employ two end-line quality control people, one of whom is drunk, and the other is smoking a joint on break to miss half of the errors.
     Those jobs go to Tennessee, Texas, Mexico....not Canada, not California. And, when a union worker tells somebody that the Mexicans have to work for 4.00 dollars per day, advise them that such is not the case.    A one-year maquiladora worker in Reynosa will be making about 28 USD per day, plus Mexican Social Security which is their version of comprehensive socialized medicine  (some companies now offer a choice of private medical insurance), plus a housing contribution which can be used to build or buy a home after a certain term of participation, scholarships for children of employees, one meal a day (surprisingly good, actually), and other perks, such as shuttle service, etc.
     The whole package comes up to about 60 dollars per day for the company's expense-to-hire.   There are variations depending on the type of product and the location of the plant. People with more time in grade, promotions, bonuses, etc. of course make more.
   At the time of the formation of the business the new hires are required to vote for a union to represent them, according to the law.  Among the choices is "White Union", which means that the Company has to set up a blind Employee's Representational Entity (Union) that they themselves run and administrate.   The "White Union" is the overwhelming choice of the employees.
     Mexicans working in maquilas are frequently using state-of-the-art robotics and  computerised equipment, pretty much like that which is used in American, Japanese, and European factories.   The factories are also not sweatshops....they are usually built and operated with something similar to or identical to settings found in the countries from whence the companies manage their domain.  Most of the non-maquiladora American companies in Mexico are actually Mexicanised in the sense that they are joint ventures involving the establishment of a Mexican corporation holding 50.1 per cent or more of the shares in the free-standing, independent, but associated operation.  For instance, the Coca - Cola de Mexico SA de CV (Mexico City) and the Coca - Cola de FEMSA, SA de CV (Monterrey) I believe are still the two largest producers of Coca - Cola products in all North America (perhaps the world) with huge distribution systems and production plants.   They work in brotherly association with their Atlanta sibling, it is said.

     So, while the labour wages are less, they are far higher than most Americans might think, after listening to blowhards on the television or seeing their moaning and groaning in the Letter to the Editor.

El Gringo Viejo

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Ahead of the "State of the Union" snooze. A word from Mr. Nowhere Man

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Associated Press heads up jobs report article with "JOBS REPORT SHOW A SIZZLING 290,000 NEW HIRES FOR DECEMBER!"

     The article continues with the predictably glowing report about how Father Obamaham has saved America because 290,000 people found jobs in December....in all sectors of the economy;   except mining and manufacturing.  

     It was a show of the success of Obama's overall economic policy to force the rich to pay their fair share so that shovel ready jobs could finally be given to the oppressed people who were clamouring to work, but who had been denied that opportunity by George Walker Bush.

    Unmentioned?   Well, it turns out, like most things Obamaham, not to be "very true".   So the liberals, progressives, socialists, marxists, and nihilists roll their collective eyes and say, "There he goes again.  Just because Father Obamaham is a Negro.  It's all pure racism!"

      "Excuse please," say Charlie Chan.  "May be White man playing Chinese-American detective, but Confucius says,'If truth falls upon you like boulder on coyote in Roadrunner cartoon, then you dead." 

     Curly, Larry, and Moe come forth with a scroll, and Moe unrolls the scroll and reads, "Hear ye, Hear ye!  Whereas the lunacy and criminality of the current administration has outstripped all possible understanding, we wish to remind the American electorate that job gains during December of 2015 included at least 50% part-time and probably temporary employments. 

      "This dovetails nicely with the Democrats pushing a choice between an avowed marxist or a bolshevik totalitarian who thinks she deserves to spend public money on every conceivable comfort and convenience for her formidable....uh....er....presence.   And on removing the bloodstains from her resume'.

         "A report that Susan McDougall refused to testify against (Sir Edmund) Hillary back in the day because everyone who had decided "go state" wound up pushing up daisies is brought forward to remind people exactly how (Sir Edmund) Hillary and Billy Jeff Blythe play "politics".

           "And the departing saviour of the poor and the oppressed and the exploited, and those who never quite pick every correct number on their lottery tickets and who blame Republicans and conservative Blacks and Latins for that form of "indiscreet white convoluted inverted White/Conservative Privilege.

      We have to remember everything that was done for them.   More free money, AFDC, Section 8, electricity/utility subsidies, free telephones, food stamps, Head Start, WIC, Social Security Disability, free attorney's services and public defenders, free abortions, free whatever. and fill-in-the-blank wish list commodity or service.

       "And.....and....of course the crown jewel, FREE MEDICAL SERVICES.  The free medical services were there anyway, of course, because of Medicaid.   But!  The Medicaid Programme failed to give appropriate credit to Father Obamaham who gave the people FREE MEDICAL SERVICES instead of just a common thing like Medicaid that covered every street shooting, every gaggle of single moms with six children coming to the emergency room because one of her children had a fever, and every wino who keeled over into the ghetto gutter, to the heroin-needle sharing, trans-reverse ungendered, HIV-AIDs victims.

       "But Curly, Larry, and Moe do laud and magnify the name of Obamaham because he managed to have more people without "health" insurance upon leaving office than before his entry to that office.  But at least he renamed the thing, so he cares....or something.   At least children aged 75 or over living at home with their grandparents can be added to the grandparent AARP - Platinum Insurance Health and Perpetual Eternal Life Policy."

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       Curly and Larry and Moe and yours truly, El Gringo Viejo are required to add that we personally approve Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street as representative of the centre of American political and social thought, and that we endorse and approve all such inventions including the Treyvon Martin National Day of Atonement .   We also demand that this day replace all other "Federal" holidays.

     Curly, Larry, and Moe have been asked to invite the American electorate to celebrate Obamaham and (Sir Edmund) Hillary for their great victories in the battle against berserk, deranged Islamic nut-cases who think that crucifying 9 - year old girls after they have been raped by deranged, Islamic nutcases, is "justifiable".    Had it not been for the "Lines in the Sand" and the identification of "JV groups" who represent no threat to the world, one can only imagine how bad things might have been.   After all, the only casualties that matter are the ones caused by the Imperialist, nouveaux colonialist, oil-company sponsored, American interests.

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      There is not enough electricity available in the Republic of Texas to allow us to proceed with the massive tsunami of deceptions, devious explanation,  pants-suits, dead potential witnesses, shovel-ready lies, and so forth.   
       Huma Wiener and Valerie Jarrett need to determine if the time has come to head for Persia or maybe Moscow in order to avoid the March of Justice.
   Remember that the horrid, corrupt, terrible Mexican government has Naval Infanty and Army soldiers who risked life and limb to charge into a home known to house desperate, heavily armed, drug trafficking, murderous scum.     
Refusing all alternate remuneration (bribes), they found, detained, arrested, and re-transported a piece of human debris like El Chaparrito Guzman and five of his closest buds.....back to prison.

      Perhaps Obamaham and (Sir Edmund) Hillary should try to escape via the storm and septic sewers of Washington, D.C.

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      The Ghosts of Benghazi will certainly be awaiting (Sir Edmund) Hillary.   No one will await Barry Soetoro, for he was a merely twig on the limb on the branch of the trunk of the tree of George Soros and the marxist movement in America.  He is/was the true "Nowhere Man".   A teleprompter reader, reading the words Valerie Jarrett wrote for him.

      And, for the sake of the Nation, Dr. Carson and Rand Paul and Mario Rubio should unite and back Senator Cruz.   Otherwise we shall have dilettante  clown for President.   Even the dolt Bloomberg pointed out that Trump inherited 1.6 billion dollars, and had he placed said money in US Treasury Bonds at the time of his inheritance, he would have 6.1 billion dollars.

     His estate is valued at 1.6 billion dollars to-day.

Great businessman?

More later, 

El Gringo Viejo

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El Zorro forwards the best list of rebuttals....concise, a quick read, accurate: Totally collapses Obama and the Gun-Grabbers Case

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This week, President Barack Obama announced executive actions related to guns. Here are 10 common myths about firearms.

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Myth No. 1: Firearm purchases at gun shows do not require a background check due to the “gun show loophole.”

Facts:

• When the president and others refer to the “gun show loophole,” they imply that there are no background checks being done at gun shows. As a result, much of the public has been misinformed and are led to believe that individuals who purchase firearms at gun shows are not subject to a background check.
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• In reality, there is no “gun show loophole.” If an individual wants to purchase a firearm from a licensed firearms retailer, which typically makes up the majority of vendors at gun shows, the individual must fill out the requisite federal firearms paperwork and undergo a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background check.
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• The only firearms that are being purchased at gun shows without a background check are those being bought and sold between individuals, peer-to-peer, as opposed to buying a firearm from a gun dealer. These private sales are not at all different from selling a personal hunting rifle to the owner’s niece or nephew down the road. It is a private sale, and no background paperwork is required. The gun is private property, and the sale is made like a sale of the family’s good silver. The one difference is that the locus of a gun show is being used to make the private sale.
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• Under current law, an individual is permitted to occasionally sell part, or all, of his personal firearms collection. These private sellers, however, cannot be “engaged in the business” of selling firearms. “Engaged in the business” means they can’t repeatedly sell firearms with the principal objective of earning funds to support themselves. Some of the individuals who wish to sell a portion, or all, of their personal firearms collection do so at the show and might display their wares on a table. These “private table sales,” however, are private, peer-to-peer sales and, therefore, do not require a background check. The president cannot change criminal statutes governing requirements for which sellers must conduct background checks. His new actions don’t do so and don’t claim to do so.
• In a peer-to-peer, private firearms transaction, it is already illegal to sell a firearm to another individual if the seller “knows or has reasonable cause to believe” that the buyer meets any of the prohibited categories for possession of a firearm (felon, fugitive, illegal alien, etc.).

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Myth No. 2: Gun shows lack any law enforcement presence and are a free-for-all for felons and other prohibited individuals to obtain firearms.

• Local, state, and federal law enforcement are often present both in               uniform and/or covertly in plain clothes to monitor and intervene insuspected unlawful firearms sales such as straw purchasing; purchases made by prohibited individuals, including non-residents; and the attempted sale of any illegal firearms.

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Myth No. 3: Individuals who purchase firearms on the Internet are not subject to background checks.

Facts:

• An individual cannot purchase a firearm directly from a firearms retailer over the Internet and have that firearm shipped to him directly. An individual can pay for the firearm over the Internet at websites and online sporting goods retailers. The firearm, however, must be picked up from a federal firearms licensee, such as a gun store. In many cases, this is the brick-and-mortar store associated with the website where the gun purchase was made. Once at the retail store, the Internet purchaser must then fill out the requisite forms, including ATF Form 4473, which initiates the NICS background check process. Thus, an Internet purchase of a firearm from a firearms retailer requires a background check.
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• Individuals from the same state are able to advertise and purchase firearms from one another and use the Internet to facilitate the transaction. It is unlawful, under current law, to sell or transfer a firearm to an individual who is out of state. Any Internet sale, even between individuals, that crosses state lines would have to utilize a federal firearms licensee, such as a gun store, and the purchaser would be required to fill out the requisite state and federal paperwork and would undergo a background check.
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Myth No. 4: The president’s Jan. 5 executive action on gun control represents landmark change regarding gun control.

Facts:

• With few exceptions, Obama’s executive action on firearms is nothing more than rhetoric regarding the status quo. Many senators have long argued for better and more robust enforcement of existing laws that prohibit criminals from owning guns.
• It is the current law of the land that anyone engaged in the business of selling firearms must have a federal firearms license. The president’s action does not change current law, but merely restates existing court rulings on the meaning of “engaged in the business.”
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Myth No. 5: The Obama administration has made firearms enforcement a priority.

Facts:

• The Obama administration has used its limited criminal enforcement resources to focus on clemency for convicted and imprisoned felons, the investigation of police departments, and civil rights cases. The latter two categories represent important work, but the Department of Justice lost track of one of its core missions of enforcing criminal law: prosecuting violent criminals, including gun criminals.
• The Obama administration is only now making firearms enforcement a priority. Clearly, enforcing the gun laws is a new initiative, or one of the president’s actions would not have been informing all of the 93 U.S. attorneys about it.
• Proof of this lack of enforcement is revealed in the decline of weapons-related prosecutions during the Obama administration. As data obtained from the Executive Office of United States Attorneys, through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal, firearms prosecutions are down approximately 25 percent under the Obama administration versus the last year of the Bush administration.
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Myth No. 6: Mental health has nothing to do with gun control.

Facts:

• People with certain levels of mental illness are not permitted to own guns. Many of the recent mass killings were committed by mentally ill individuals. One of the keys to preventing further mass shootings and violence committed with firearms is addressing the issue of mental health.
• Background checks to prevent the mentally ill from obtaining guns can work only if states provide mental health records to the NICS system. Too many states have failed to do so. Many of the worst offenders are states with the most stringent gun control laws. For multiple years now, many members of Congress have repeatedly called for and introduced legislation that would provide incentives for states to submit their mental health records for inclusion in the NICS database.
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Myth No. 7: Obama’s executive action on gun control will thwart criminals’ ability to obtain firearms.

Facts:

• The president’s executive action regarding firearms is focused primarily on individuals who attempt to purchase firearms through the background check process.
• Criminals, however, obtain firearms in myriad illegal ways, including home invasion robbery; trading narcotics for firearms; burglary of homes, vehicles, and businesses; and straw purchasing.
•  Legislation, Senate Amendment 725, was specifically designed to combat the straw purchasing of firearms as well as firearms traffickers who transfer firearms to prohibited individuals and out-of-state residents.
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Myth No. 8: There is a general consensus in America that greater gun control is needed to prevent mass shootings in the United States.

Facts:

• Despite the president’s statement to the contrary, polls have shown that the majority of Americans do not believe that stricter gun control would reduce the number of mass shootings in the United States.
• The American public does not believe that making it harder for law-abiding Americans to obtain guns makes America safer. In fact, polls have shown that a majority of Americans thinks the United States would be safer if there were more individuals licensed and trained to carry concealed weapons. A majority opposes re-imposition of the “assault weapons” ban.
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Myth No. 9: The terrorist “no-fly” list is a proper mechanism to bar Americans from purchasing firearms. — Obama, Jan. 5

Fact:

• The no-fly list is actually multiple lists, which are generated in secret and controlled by executive branch bureaucrats. The Second Amendment right to bear arms has been determined by the U.S. Supreme Court to be a fundamental right. This puts the right to bear arms in our most closely guarded rights, similar to the rights to free speech and freedom of religion. It is unconstitutional to deprive an American citizen of his Second Amendment right without notice and an opportunity to be heard.
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Myth No. 10: Gun retailers need to step up and refuse to sell semi-automatic weapons. —Obama, Jan. 5

Fact:

• There is nothing unlawful about a semi-automatic firearm. A semi-automatic firearm simply means that a round is discharged with each pull of the trigger. These include most shotguns used for waterfowl hunting and rifles commonly used for target shooting.
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• For new OROGs  (Official Readers of the Old Gringo) should be aware that
• El Zorro is a two tour combat veteran of Viet Nam, a highly qualified jet-tech,
• computer expert, telephonics expert, in short one of those peculiar people]
• who is top-flight whether wearing a blue collar or white collar.  Widely read
• and studied,  he contributes and improves this blog frequently.

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       As stated in the title...that's it.  A briefly state compendium of refutations.   It is irrefutable.   Each point is succinct and each point is true.   Almost everything Obama said during his CNN "Exercise in Condescension" was an out and out, purposeful lie.   He did not believe and does not believe what he said is true.  His entire effort was aimed at infected the low-information, low-intelligence potential voter, along with the "women's vote" cohort of the population who the "Progressives" believe abhor firearms.   He, in his mind, relies upon that entire swath of the electorate being ignorant of the true statistics, ignorant about what the term ''semi-automatic" means, and close-minded about the entire issue.   He probably even thinks he carried the session, in spite of the fact that had it been a boxing match, the fight would have been called in the 8th round on a TKO.....Obama bloody and battered on the ropes with one eye swollen shut and the other closing.

     In closing, we like to remember a particular moment when one of the Obsolete Media's sacred water buffaloes....it may have been Connie Chung...looked into the camera and declared, "The issue is clear.  The need to limit access to the purchase of fully semi-automatic rifles has never been more urgent."

Thanks to one and all for being here, and please pass this around if you would.  

El Gringo Viejo

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El Chapo Guzman recaptured 08-01-2016 Breaking news (expanded and updated)

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    The issue of El Chapo Guzman is, to-day, a very pleasant thing.  It should be admitted that your humble writer was elated at the news that the Mexican Army had located and engaged Guzman in an upscale subdivision of the very pleasantly boring city of Los Mochis, Sinaloa. 

     After first reports, this Army guy had to swallow the fact that the Mexican Army provided the necessary security ring around the site to be attacked, perhaps three special companies of heavy infantry.   Los Mochis is a new city, relatively, by Mexican standards, being founded and organised in the first quarter of the 1900s, mainly by American agricultural interests.   It is also the western terminus of the famous Copper Canyon rail line, Ferrocarriles Chihuahua al Pacifico, or  The Che - Pe  (chay - pei) as it is known in the area.             

    Oddly enough, the rail line does not really connect Chihuahua City with the Pacific Ocean.   It actually connects to the Sea of Cortez, which is connected to the Pacific Ocean, but several hundred miles further to the South. But we diverge from our unconquerable instinct to gloat.

     When the time came to wallow in the quagmire of stupidity and/or corruption that was required to facilitate the escape of El Chapo Guzman, we were more than slightly disappointed, as the OROG might imagine. While we reserve the right to bellyache and moan about Mexico's deficiencies and problems, we truly do celebrate their advances and the really fine things that abound in Mexico.   We especially celebrate how they maintain so much of their past and how in all seeming disorder they present so very many, thousands and thousands of exquisite corners of tranquility, beauty, dignity, and peace.   And yes, the French, Germans, and Japanese visitors say the same thing....it is not the mad visions of a pro-Mexican Texian.

     BUT!   When El Chapo made his escape and all were guffawing about the stupidity, corruption, and incompetence of the Mexican authorities, your humble commentator suggested strongly that it would be but a short episode that El Chapo would be a free man.

    The press people assured us, however, that El Chapo was extremely shrewd and that he had 6,000,000,000 dollars in his front pocket and scores of thousands of people who would protect him at all costs and that he would bribe his way into Costa Rica or wherever he wished and that was that, so stick a fork in it.....it's done.

     One quiet, small, insignificant voice said, "No!"
   That is because of Rule No. 7 of the Mexican Ethos and Life Guide which reads, "The easy stuff we can screw up pretty well.  The hard stuff we do perfectly."

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    G-2 elements of the Mexican Army managed to pick up on the trail of El Chapo about three months ago.   Regular infantry went in at a place named Cosala',  Sinaloa on the western slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental, near the border with the State of Durango.  Rather clumsily, they found that El Chapo had been in a small, very marginalized congregation of huts.  After a bit of door busting and shouting, it was learned that El Chapo had gone west towards the Coast, in the general direction of Mazatlan and Los Mochis, and Culiacan.....where he had a lot of friends.....and even more enemies.

     Apparently, while afoot, and grabbing rides with two buddies in tow, he decided to go, while still in the mountainous pre-savannah area, to the north and another village where he was less known.   That stay lasted about two weeks, and then one early evening he was informed that the Army had arrived in force....many soldiers....maybe 300.    Before he could come up with a plan, he was left with no alternatives except to run into the night and hope that he could remember the run of the bunny trail that led due west.

      Suddenly there was a great deal of gunfire, several of El Chapo's men were killed or seriously wounded.   El Chapo himself either broke his leg, or was shot in the leg....stories change back and forth.  He also had suffered a serious laceration to the left side of his forehead.   But he managed his escape.

      Another two months or so elapsed.   Observers were deployed along the old "free" highway between Los Mochis and Mazatlan, and at many points along the fancy toll road.   Secondary, rural highways were staked out.   Ears were put to the ground, conversations monitors at truck stops, in a thousand little bars and clapboard restaurants and in the hundreds of fancier, even elegant restaurants and haunts of the middle and upper classes.   It is probable that 200 or more Mexican Army and Naval Infantry worked in plain clothes, as their information drew them, ever further, to the north, and the city of Los Mochis.

     It is probable, and it has been said, that Mexican Policia Civil Federal, also in plain clothes joined with the Army to form a line over all the highways heading north towards Mexicali and Hermosillo and Nogales.   They did not want El Chapo to make a run to the United States.   Toll Stations were manned with revolving teams of plain clothes "maintenance workers" and  "truck drivers'' in case Guzman decided to take the high road to the north.  Truck stops and diners were likewise staffed in all probability with Federal Civil Police.   Information continued to be gathered.

     Before long, the golden nugget is delivered.  El Chapo has many friends, and he has even more enemies.   He is in Los Mochis in one of the several rich districts.   In a matter of hours, the forces of the Republic are deployed and the forces of Lucifer are surrounded.   It is in a lower range de luxe part of town.  The house is solidly built, brick veneer over concrete block and plaster, inside and out.
     There was a methodical fire fight for about four hours.  At each juncture where there was a silence, the renewal revealed a little less firepower on the part of the Guzman group.   El Chapo was not in the house when all went silent, but the police and Naval Infantry and Army pretty much knew where he would be.  And they were waiting for him.  To wit:

     When all was done there was El Chapo, semi-hog tied, six dead members of his inner group.  Some were immediate subordinates.   One, the leader of the northern division of the Sinaloa Cartel escaped, although it is thought he might have been "allowed" to escape so as to be followed by some of the "maintenance workers" and "truck drivers" to other important hideaways in the north, perhaps even in the United States.  El Chapo, in the meantime, was seen exiting a sewer and meeting up with his "ride" on the north end of town.  That vehicle was quickly surrounded by the famous belted machine-gun pickups of the Mexican Army....three or four of them, and Guzman was taken to a nearby, tony hotel/motel of four and a half stars, washed-up, and then delivered to a waiting helicopter.
      That helicopter then delivered Guzman to the airport where a Mexican Army executive jet was waiting to take him and his five buddies to prison processing.   The shackled "detainees" were prohibited from speaking for the duration of the 90 minute flight.

     An odd twist is placed upon this whole scenario when one learns that El Chapo made many mistakes that set him up for a fall.   Among the strangest is that he continuously worked his cellular telephone, negotiating with producers and agents concerning a biographic that he was trying to put together.   I have not been made privileged to be informed exactly with whom Guzman was so ardently negotiating about telling the story of his fine life.

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Add Here is a bit of proof that we Army-type guys did have a

role in this capture of El Chapo Guzman.    Kudos, however, are

certainly due the Naval Infantry...what we call the Marines, for the

truly magnificent victory they achieved.   Truth be told, the Infantry

Naval and the Ejercito are both repeated and honoured as honest

and valiant fighting and public service groupings, but a slight edge 

is held by the Naval Infantry in opinion polls.  

More later,

El Gringo Viejo

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