Trump and his etherial cure for Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative (OSMI)

    Our betters and the Wise Ones come again upon us. They simply want to save us from ourselves.  So "hope and change" becomes "make America great again" and the dull and those who care not to ask, "What specifically do you mean when you say 'hope America and change great again?" are thrusted back into their frustrations.   Or is it 'petards'?

     And, once again, we have chosen neither the low road not the high road.  We, the most advanced nation on Planet Earth,  have slid into shortstop in the great American game of political baseball.

    It reminded El Gringo Viejo of that little game that was sold in airports and bus stations around the nation.  It is pictured to the left here.  I bought one in San Antonio while on a boring trip full of boring nothing to do, surrounded by old boring people.  The game was really boring too.  So I was happy for the luxury of being perfectly miserable and totally consumed with both self-loathing and the joy of thinking that perhaps I was making the old boring people miserable.   Those were the fun times, right?

Johnathon Gruber -
 Was glad that Americans were too
 stupid to understand the Obama
 Socialised Medicine Initiative

     So, here we are.  Father Obamaham could not put together Gruber's Grand Plan for the Stupid well enough to convince the American populace to essentially commit slow suicide and pay through the nose for it.  And now comes SuperDon to show everyone how it's done.  "The Donald", whom I am sure has the best of intentions unlike his predecessor, is going to try to saw the lady in the box in two.  He's never done the trick before, but he did assure the pretty girl that "everything is going to be fine, don't worry about a thing".  After all he had seen Maxwell Smart do it on television during an episode of "Get Smart".  Or was it the Smothers Brothers?

     At this point he has figured out that paying for the dolts, bums, street people, slugs, gang shooting victims, miracle babies, miracle anchor-babies, elderly orphans who have been put on the iceberg by their offspring, etc. is going to be expensive and the productive class will have to pay for it...in spades....and through the nose.   It is because he insists upon putting together a national programme.  He cannot help himself.  He, like all liberal, pseudo-Republicans, is a statist.  He believes that he and the Grubers on his team can make a "national health care system" at least as good as the one in Cuba.

     Of course, Mr. Superman is like O'bama because he knows that none of this affects him personally since he and his families are....you know....necessary....important to the greater good.  He and they will have whatever they need or want which is how what should be should be.   He, like Obama, and all the Progressives who are building Utopia on Planeta Tierra can keep pushing the little numbers until they all line up correctly.

     And when they are done, all they will have is a bunch of little numbers who all lined up correctly.   Boring.  But it only cost a silver quarter.

El Gringo Viejo
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Catching Up on Mexico and other topics

     We had a little under a couple of week's stay down at our little mud hut on the edge of civilisation and at the face of the Sierra Madre Oriental.   It was a remarkably arduous period with a prolonged periods (for the area) of temperatures hovering from 32 to 39 degrees....day and night, for four days calendar days and three nights.

(Left to Right) Cleopatra, Calico,
 and Smokey working as heaters
each for the other.

     El Gringo Viejo held out for a couple of days, but finally, as the temperature plunged even in the normally exempt interior of the adobe abode it was obvious that we would have to start burning the precious firewood.   The rule that we should not burn the firewood because there might be a greater need for it later had lost its lustre.  If not now, then when?....and if not here, then where? became the new general orders.

     There were a couple of the distant, really high peaks to our west and northwest that had snow, especially the Pen~a Nevada at 13,000 fasl and the Cerro Potosi that is just shy of 11,000 fasl .   Such were the conditions  this before departure, but the area was already beginning to show signs of entering into an early Spring episode as we departed early yesterday, Saturday, at 06:50, nearing daybreak.

     These are nice little collateral tales, but during these times Mexico really had a seizure that overshadowed even the misery of enduring Winter for this Old Gringo.  To wit:

GASOLINAZO!!!

    To the right one can see a blockade of a PEMEX station between Cd. Juarez and Chihuahua, Chihuahua.   This scene was repeated in several score places across the Republic during the period from 3 January to around the 10th of this month.
      The Palacio de Gobierno (State Capitol Building) in Monterrey was badly damaged by rioting vandals.  They destroyed many of the impressive stained glass portraits of venerable 

personages of the State of Nuevo Leon during the centuries.   Public and private property damages throughout the Republic totaled "easily over a billion dollars" according to one reliable analyst.
     If there was any positive information to come out of this matter it was that the police, private security guards, and military stood up to and into the anarchists and looters.  There were several thousand arrests in scores and hundreds of sites.  Particularly hurt were middle and high end commercial properties and several capital buildings and county main buildings in major provincial cities.  Even our capital city of Ciudad Victoria there were significant albeit brief disorders.  Thankfully, things calmed down as quickly as they had ignited.

     The aftermath will be slow to heal.  There is considerable bitterness at all levels against the present administration; i.e.- President Ernesto Pen~a Nieto et al, and "The Oligarchy of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional. 
     The arbitrary raising of prices on gasoline and diesel was a shock foisted on people who, as with most Americans, have no idea of what government control and market forces can do to foul up natural law.   Mexico, since the expropriation in 1938, has used the state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos as a monopolistic foil that slays many of the Left's ogres as well as working to enslave people to a certain customary dependence upon The Government.
     As I went down and back this last time, it was necessary to consider that many PEMEX stations were being shut down, blockaded, and /or sabotaged.   Many had been unable to off-load combustibles, be they high-test Supreme gasoline (half of which is supplied by EXXON - MOBIL), regular Green Pump, or diesel fuel, and therefore had had to literally shut down, save for personnel to at least throw the pump switches off in case of fire or whatever.
     The price of fuel had been increased a little more than 20% overnight, bringing the Supreme to around 3.90 or thereabouts in American dollars per gallon.  The regular fuel and diesel rose up to 3.45 plus or minus while other basic commodities and price controlled things were rising at or near the same rate or a little less.   It was a classic backwards step by statist economists who are attempting to "provide for those who have less" through anti-market price controls and labyrinth-like regulations.

     There was one article published by I believe a major Brit newspaper....perhaps The Guardian, that pointed out that the Mexicans were used to have the National Patrimony (oil) used as a way to "give the people" cheap energy, and "the people" resented having their "patrimony taken from them".   The reporter / observer was and probably remains a willing fool, and probably is making similar banal and inane statemenst in articles being dispatched even as your humble servant clatters away here in his cave.
     Diesel was used for about 50 years by the government as a tool to pacify the industrial and transportation "oligarchs".   For instance  even into the 1980s, a good quality diesel fuel was provided for the price of about 18 American cents per gallon.   And as for the notion that the Mexicans participated in some kind of "patrimonial subsidization" at all levels was and is silly to the point of being preposterous.  Mexican fuel prices, save for the "diesel deal" had always been from 60 to at times 100 per cent higher than American fuel at the retail level.
     Much of the difference in the cost was passed along to the Secretaria de Hacienda (Mexican Federal Treasury Secretariat) essentially as a tax levied on the automobile driving middle and upper economic classes.   That practice has continued up to the present, and as of the 3rd day of  January, 2017 it was re-accentuated.  So, as the OROG can clearly see, the GASOLINAZO has been alive and well for a long, long, long time.

    Fortunately for me, my fuel purchases were limited to two stops, one going down and one going back up at the same place, just to have enough....just in case.  I spent 400 pesos (about 20 USD), all told, for the Supreme fuel, which actually renders my old hoss about a 15% mileage increase as opposed to the regular.
     Also, people where we were took everything in stride, and a general calm has been restored.  The national demagogue-in-chief Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the Left's perpetual candidate for the presidency  every six years for the past quarter century, it seems, has been a little less than strident and hysterical while trying to stake out every left-of-centre vote that exists in Mexico before the next campaign begins in a couple of years.  Mon Diux!!  Seulement deux ans!!

More later,
El Gringo Viejo
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A View of the Recently Completed Planting of a Lime Orchard

     Next to the Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre one encounters the Hacienda de La Vega, a nearly 300 acre stretch along the El Coralillo section of the Rio Corona.  The entire surface of the La Vega spread, save for ten or twelve acres, was re-cleared of the old, worn out, repeatedly freeze damage Valencia oranges and prepared for the planting of a very special sour-sweet lime that has become heavily sought by purveyors in places like Mexico City, Europe, Japan, and especially in the United States of America.

     Our neighbour, the owner of what you see before you has put a considerable pretty penny in the re-clearing, research, sapling purchase, and planting of this new venture.   There is nothing haphazard about the layout or preparations.  Buyers are have already been circulating around this prime growing area, looking for those who have already decided to go the route of the fancy limes.

     One thing that the Santa Engracia area has going for it is its unique mix of very wet, very dry, very hot, to pretty darned chilly climate.   Being right on the Tropic of Cancer, near the coastal lowlands, and adjacent to mountains ranging from 5,000 to 13,000 feet bring upon the citrus, and especially these limes, certain very positive responses.   Freezes are very rare, and even at that, these particular limes are very recuperative.   Limes usually do better than oranges and grapefruit with cold stress, and these particular ones, to restate, are even more resilient than the norm.

     In keeping with the way business runs and must run during these times in Mexico, the family prefers to remain a bit hermitic concerning various of the fine points and other administrative matters about this investment.  For my part, I am glad to see my friend go into the venture while still young enough to enjoy the fruits of his and his wife's labours. (Is that a pun?)

More later,

El Gringo Viejo

So Much Swirl - My Head is Spinning.... The Russians Are Coming !!!!

     All this matter about the Russians meddling in the American political processes, as if (a) were true, and then if true, (b) it had a ruinous effect upon the outcome of the elections immediately past are truly a very minor tempest in a faux and tiny tea-pot.  The Russians meddle in everything.  Very few Russians are born with souls, and those so delivered by the stork seldom use their souls.

     Any group of people who, in their majority, could clamour for a return to Stalin's time need to be disregarded except for the need to always be prepared for some senseless aggression.  Actually, it seems as though the Russians are caught in a downward spiral that doesn't even work very well.  With a declining population and a sometimes sober Army and Air Force, the population of 200 million can eke out a 1.325 trillion dollar annual economy.

     Those figures might impress Democrats in America, but when it is considered that Mexico has essentially the same Gross National Product, but with a total population of 120 million....one can easily surmise that Russia does little or nothing for the seven months of the year that the country is generally frozen.  Novisibursk, Siberia....the administrative capital....declares that they have to do the census in August because it is the only time they can determine if the drunks normally covered up with snow and mud in the streets (there are no gutters) are alive or dead is in the Summertime.

     Even without the assistance of being a communist government dedicated to death...as in the 1,000,000 military personnel they lost during the siege of Berlin in 1945....the Romanoffs managed to lose their entire fleet of warships (40 cruiser and destroyer class ships) and 70% of their officers and 65% of their enlisted (including conscripts) personnel in the Army.   The Japanese simply destroyed the Russians in about one year.   It is worth noting that the unspoken Roosevelt Understanding was taken seriously by the Crown in Tokyo when the Peace Accord was signed and sealed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
     Japan, although victorious, had also been exhausted of its military and industrial capacity.   But, they had gained the impression from the Americans that it would be understandable should the superior group in the region, the Japanese would be better prepared to take care of the lands and peoples of the Western Pacific, Southeast Asia, and China. Those populations also needed to be disciplined, shepherded, and protected from themselves.     To the enlightened Progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt and later Woodrow Wilson and later Franklin Roosevelt it seemed reasonable to deign that distant part of the Earth to rule by those best qualified to rule it.   Of course, as in all the acts and plans of the Progressives, their notions were folly.

     And while all of this was going on, Russia was succumbing to a half-century of horror that would make the Romanoffs appear to be sympathetic characters in the theatre of history.   And, by comparison, they truly were.

     All of this is neither here nor there in the matter (or non-matter) of Russian "meddling" in the election that caused the Coronation of America's First Woman President to be put on hold for another two or three hundred years.

The greater questions should be:

     (1)     Why did Debbie Wasserman Shultz manipulate and repeatedly lie about procedures blocking candidates other than the final Democrat nominee from reasonable equity of treatment according to the rules of the Democrat National Committee?

       (2)       Why did Donna Brazile feel compelled to pass the final nominee debate questions both during the Democrat debates and during the final three debates between the Republican and the Democrat candidates.   She had gained access to those questions from willing accomplices within the Obsolete Press and dutifully passed them along as do all corrupt, marxist political operatives.   To them, as always, truth is defined as 'information that aids in the establishment of socialism'.  Any information that contradicts that "truth" or which in any way retards the advance of socialism is to regarded as a "lie".

      (3)       Why did some lower level, very young Democrat National Committee member wind up murdered, while walking away from work, then being found dead, still in possession of his personal documents, an expensive watch, a wallet with considerable cash, and with credit cards.  Rumours began and then were quashed by the Obsolete Press that had indicated that this young man had become disenchanted with the DNC, the Democrat official candidate, and the crudeness and squabbling that seemed ever-present at the DNC offices.
     Mr. Assange, the world's favourite divulger suggested that the passing of documents up to his level is sometimes very dangerous, even lethal in certain cases.   He also declared that the Russians had nothing to do with his leaks of easily obtained electronic mail from the very leaky Secretary of State's off-campus communications systems and from her campaign as well as from the very feebly defended Democrat National Committee's systems of communication and communication storage.

     (4)      What is clear is that the same people who sent operatives from the State Department and White House with private and State Department money and in-kind funding to orchestrate a campaign against Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel....directly and without apology....are somehow now claiming that "foreign elements" were meddling in the 2016 Presidential campaign.   The hypocrisy has the roar of Niagara and the usual stench of corruption always present with "community organiser" shakedown specialists and off-shore money vacuuming machines involved in the old pay-for-play fund-raising games.
   
     It all ends up the same way.   Some Conservative, Dinesh D'Souza, who might have offended Barry Soetoro goes to prison for several months....to general criminal population....for committing an error in the making of a openly acknowledged campaign contribution to a friend.   The amount was 20,000 USD.  But the famous Solyndra purposefully lost over 500,000,000 dollars, money that feigned to be invested for "green energy" projects, but which in large part was essentially gifted to Democrat operatives posing as green energy entrepreneurs.   Further, much of that money, intentionally and indirectly, flowed back into the Democrat Party at various and sundry levels, including local, States, and national Democrat entities.   None of the principals paid any financial or criminal price.   It was like "Fast and Furious" all over again....and again.....and again.   IRS scandal, anyone?

    This Russian Gambit, supported still by the Lackey Zomboes of the Obsolete Press will be used once again to explain how all of this supposition that Barry the Foreign Exchange Student had even an ounce of corruption or mendacity.   But, after all is said and done, and they say in New York and Washington, "at the end of the day", what possible difference at this point could any of this make?

More later about gasoline prices in Mexico and other interesting stuff.
El Gringo Viejo

OLD TRAINS & BAD WRECKS (rare photos)

We include a few scenes of the Democrat campaign just past.

     (1)     With all of the explanations for the failure of the Democrat Party's election failures having been made.....then being allowed to morph into increasingly improbable, even laughable constructs about how their certain victory was stolen by evil agencies...we began to have a sense of being absolutely certain that the Democrat Party is the world's greatest Train Wreck. 

     The FBI Director, either fearing for his or his family being physical person being harmed, or having some embarrassing peccadillo in his past revealed by the Clinton forces, failed to recommend the  prosecution of Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Attorney General.....a dolt by the name of Loretta Lynch.   Mayor Giuliani assured us some time back, in each case, that the above named luminaries were and are straight shooters and respected officers.

     Mayor Giuliani's "New York Values" seems to have allowed him to have also been significantly self-uninformed.  It was clear that the Attorney General met with Billy Jeff Clinton, surreptitiously  in order to inform him that she had been assured that the cake was baked and that Mrs. Clinton would not have to suffer the ignominy of being measured by any rule of law.  All the correct political class agreed that such a move to indict or convict or any variation of such icky stuff, is after all, correctly reserved for "the little people".

     BUT!  all of this in neither here nor there.   The actual point is that Barack Hussein Obama is posturing against the Russian president, or whatever title the Banty thug has now, demanding that Putin desist from meddling in American elections.  He has also ordered Putin to stop conducting electronic espionage and data collection.  Or else....there will be a line drawn in the sand and referrals made to the FBI....And the United Nations!!!!

    AND....BUT again!!   It was the White House with Michelle and Valerie in charge who lined up Democrat operatives en masse and shipped them to Israel to back up the opposition to Bibi Netanyahu's candidacy for re-election as Prime Minister of Israel during the last Israeli Knesset elections.  As usual, leftists are caught doing that which they blame upon others,  Those whom they wish to falsely accuse can almost always be sure that the things being described as a stain against the character of the conservative and/or Republican is almost certainly active measures being practiced by the marxist and "progressive" Democrats.

      (2)   During the past by-elections in Mexico, the State of Tamaulipas elected various local and State-wide officials.  The Partido de Accion Nacional made huge headway in a State that normally has voted for the "Party of the Institutional Revolution" (leftist contradictive gibberish) and its forerunners for the past century.  During the past by-elections in Mexico, the State of Tamaulipas elected various local and State-wide officials.  The Partido de Accion Nacional made huge headway in a State that normally has voted for the "Party of the Institutional Revolution", or the old one-party "official" Central government party,

       Happily, we can report the following:    The Governor (our guy), Garcia Cabeza de Vaca hit the ground running.  Audits were completed, projects of greatest need in transportation and school repairs were defined. Offensives to find trade missions in the private sector, both to buy and to sell, were identified.  Private sector industry, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, etc. were plugged into activities....almost all private-to-private interchange.....and the rural, mainly State highways (known as Farm-to-Market and Ranch-to- Market highways in Texas) were assessed and found wanting for repair.

     The rural highways have seen remarkable redressing and repairs, as well as out-and-out improvements from the ground up in places where repeated pot-holing had been occurring over the years.  State Police patrols, co-ordinating with the Army and Naval Infantry have actually been out and about serving warrants, arresting known trouble-makers, and generally doing police stuff.  There has been little of that during the past many months.

     We are hopeful, and somewhat certain, that our new governor will prove to be that "magic potion'' pulling Tamaulipas ahead, to the benefit of rich and poor and everyone in between.

More later,
El Gringo Viejo

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Back from the Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre

___________________________

     We returned to Texas yesterday, after having received clients at our little place.  Our clients were quite pleasant, knowledgable about much, and seemed to enjoy the 4 day and 3 night respite.

     They had motorcycled from Florida's east coast area to our place in five days, in horribly cold and blustery weather.   By the time they arrived at our place a little to the northwest of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas....they were ready to catch their breathe, so to speak.

       Leading up to their arrival, we had had a spate of high winds (30 mph with frequent gusts up to 80 mph), and steadily declining temperatures, finally falling into the low to mid 40s.  We had several large limbs fall and bushels of various types of  chaff.

     Luckily our clients arrived a day after the bad weather.   While the evening was still cold enough to have a fire in the fireplace during supper and afterward, weather improved and warmed up for a pleasant stay, until the last afternoon and night.

     After standing in during the high winds and cold, our electricity stopped.  Such events have become increasingly rare throughout Mexico during the past several years so we were obviously distressed for our clients, especially.  Our overall service was maintained with our gas stove and with the adobe construction keeping the slight chill at bay.

     The clients, couple who were well studied and highly literate...(the sen~or is a neurologist and his lady an editor or something of the like)...never missed a beat or complained or moaned.  Actually none of our clients have ever been so disposed, thankfully, for so long as we have ever received guests.

     It is worth commenting that when they left, as they had arrived, they were mounted on their antique, 4 cylinder, glittering chrome and black lacquer BMW cycle.   They had helmet cams, maps, and all manner of provision and supply.  We were sad to see them go.   Very intelligent and elegant people.

More tomorrow.

El Gringo Viejo

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