Re-Posting to underscore that We are not un-studied Klanners or in any wise "Deplorable".

Sunday, 28 April 2013

SAN JACINTO - 21 April 1836

This is a reprint from a previous post.  We had a new set of commentaries about San Jacinto that suffered from an electrical problem during editing.   We are attempting to either resuscitate or re-write the lost submission.

San Jacinto Day - 21 April 1836. Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad. May they all Rest in Peace.

General Vicente Filisola

The gentleman pictured above was many things.   He was a Spaniard with an Italian name.  He was a veteran of the Napoleanic Wars, and a distinguished Spanish soldier.   He came to New Spain late in the colonial period and served during the transition from Spanish to Mexican control of that area which now would include all of Mexico, Central America, western Canada, and most of what would become the western half of the United States of America.    For a brief period during the rule of Emperor Agustin de Iturbide I of the Mexican Empire 1821 - 1823, General Vicente Filisola served his Emperor as Governor of Central America.

      The good General served only briefly, however, due to the overthrow of the Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Mexico in 1824.   He did provide for an orderly transition from Mexican control to local governance and order, and withdrew his Imperial Army back into Mexico and joined the re-organised Army as a brigadier.

      It is said that Filisola was probably the one who inspired Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to think of himself as...."The Napoleon of the West"....because of Lopez de Santa Anna's fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte and the legends associated with that Corsican.   Filisola was one of the few people in anyones army who had officer level dealings on a Napoleonic field of battle.

    Vicente Filisola is important to Texans because he was one of those Generals immediately

under the command of the all important, self-consumed, pompous Generalissimo Presidente

Lopez de Santa Anna.    Along with Filisola, and Perfecto de Cos, the Presidente's

brother-in-law, and old Castrillon, and Ramirez y Sesma....all Spaniards  by birth

and world view, there was also Brigadier Jose' Urrea, the Indian Fighter, a Davy

Crockett figure, at once both rough-cut, and aristocratic, and oddly one of only two

Mexican general officers fighting in the Texas War of Independence who were born

Mexicans.

    The commander in chief Lopez de Santa Anna, and the lowest ranking general

officer were Mexicans.   Lopez de Santa Anna had moved three large elements from

all parts of the country from January up to mid-February to do battle against a crafty

bunch of scrappers in a place called "nowhere" by some and Texas by others.   Urrea

moved a third of the Army along the Texas Coast, aiming to unify with the main body

of the Army around a place called San Jacinto.   Urrea also moved quickly, like an early

form of blitzkrieg, although he had five major battles against Texian units numbering

from 100 to 500 combatants in each case, and several significant skirmishes which

tested his 2,400 effectives severely.   He is best remembered, however, as the Mexican

general who left orders to deal fairly and well with the Texian Colonel Fannin and the

440 Texian prisoners, only to have his orders countermanded by the Generalissimo

Presidente.   So while Urrea had moved up to Victoria del Rio Guadalupe a few miles

from Goliad, his subordinate received orders underlining the existing orders from the

High Command that all found holding arms against the government would be executed

for treason.

     Here, El Gringo Viejo enters a well-documented but rather neglected fact about the

the issues of personality, strategy, tactics, honour, and the business of war that the

Mexicans were undergoing even as they were winning, fairly easily against the

insurrectionists.  To wit:

Gen. Jose' Urrea

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Words of the hapless Colonel Nicolas de la Portilla        "I was unable, therefore, to carry out the good intentions dictated by my feelings, overcome by the difficult circumstances that surrounded me. I authorized the execution, of thirty adventurers taken prisoners, and setting free those who were colonists or Mexicans      "These orders always seemed to me harsh, but they were the inevitable result of the barbarous and inhuman  decree which declared outlaws those whom it wished to convert into citizens of the republic,  I wished to elude these orders as far as possible without compromising my personal responsibility.       "They doubtlessly surrendered confident that Mexican generosity would not make their surrender useless, for under any other circumstances they would have sold their lives dearly, fighting to the last. I had due regard for the motives that induced them to surrender, and for this reason I used my influence with the general-in-chief to save  them, if possible, from being butchered." Diary of the Military Operations of the Division which under the Command of General José Urrea Campaigned in Texas February to March 1836 Translation from Carlos Casteñeda's The Mexican Side  of the Texan Revolution (Some headings added by  current editor, WLM) For Biographies, Search Handbook of Texas Online (Extract from the Diary of Col. Nicolás de la Portilla)   In a Letter Portilla to Urrea....."I feel much distressed  at what has occurred here; a scene enacted in cold blood  having passed before my eyes which has filled me with  horror. All I can say is, that my duty as a soldier, and  what I owe to my country, must be my guaranty...." March 26. At seven in the evening I received orders from General Santa Anna by special messenger, instructing me to execute at once all prisoners taken by force of arms agreeable to the general orders on the subject. (I have the original order in my possession.) I kept the matter secret and no one knew of it except Col. Garay, to whom I communicated the order. At eight o'clock, on the same night, I received a communication from Gen. Urea by special messenger in which among other things he says, "Treat the prisoners well, especially Fannin. Keep them busy rebuilding the town and erecting a fort. Feed them with the cattle you will receive from Refugio." What a cruel contrast in these opposite instructions! I spent a restless night. sdct   March 27.   At daybreak, I decided to carry out the orders of the general-in-chief because I considered them superior. I assembled the whole garrison and ordered the prisoners, who were still sleeping, to be awaked. There were 445. (The eighty that had just been taken at Cópano and had, consequently, not borne arms against the government, were set aside.) The prisoners were divided into three groups and each was placed in charge of an adequate guard, the first under Agustin Alcerrica, the second under Capt. Luis Balderas, and the third under Capt. Antonio Ramírez. I gave instructions to these officers to carry out the orders of the supreme government and the general-in-chief. This was immediately done. There was a great contrast in the feelings of the officers and the men. Silence prevailed. Sad at heart, I wrote to Gen. Urrea expressing my regret at having been concerned in so painful an affair. I also sent an official account of what I had done, to the general-in-chief. [Portilla to Urrea, Goliad, March 26 1836 and Portilla to Urrea, Goliad, March 27, 1836] ______________________        El Gringo Viejo and many old timey Texans know these stories, but they are not well-known any longer.   Newly arriving people with Mexican backgrounds assume they know all and newly arriving people from the United States and elsewhere have seen Davy Crockett on Disney or some variation, and are certain in their knowledge of the issues involved with the period from 1829 through 1846 and the Texas situation.        This is not said with any particular arrogance.   It is known that what El Gringo Viejo knows from his own research is now useless information. Nothing matters in the course of human conduct that cannot be compressed into a six-word phrase to put on a bumper sticker.   What is past is no longer prologue, but rather simply useless white-noise on the left side of the time line.       But as an enemy the man pictured below is known among the old, last remaining Texans who know what Texas really was, as an honorable enemy....a good and patriotic man involved in a grisly profession.     Something like Rommel, perhaps. Manuel Fernández Castrillón (1761–1836) Fought Texians both at the Battle of the Alamo and at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Castrillon was Santa Anna's ally through much of their working relationship, but Castrillón often took exception to Santa Anna's decisions during the Texas Revolution. He opposed the hurried assault on the Alamo. Yet when he received his orders to lead the battle's first column of troops, he did so with expert efficiency.

A humane and honorable soldier, Castrillón also pleaded clemency on behalf of the seven Texian fighters who survived the Alamo siege. Castrillón's arguments for mercy were ignored, and the men were executed. Castrillón again stated his protest when Santa Anna ordered the execution of the Goliad prisoners.

Castrillón's compassion was a sign of kindness, not weakness. When the Texians roused Mexican forces from their afternoon siesta on 21 April 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto, he was one of the few Mexican officers to stand his ground. 

His bravery was recorded in the memoirs of Texian second lieutentant Walter Paye Lane: 

"As we charged into them the General commanding the Tampico Battalion (their best troops) tried to rally his men, but could not. He drew himself up, faced us, and said in Spanish: 'I have been in forty battles and never showed my back; I am too old to do it now.' 

He continues: "Gen. Rusk hallooed to his men: 'don't shoot him,' and knocked up some to their guns; but others ran around and riddled him with balls. I was sorry for him. He was an old Castilian gentleman, Gen. Castrillo."

Honored on both sides of the Texas Revolution—except by Santa Anna, who blamed the loss at San Jacinto in part on Castrillón—he was even buried in the family graveyard of Lorenzo de Zavala, the vice-president of Texas.

     So, all these major footnotes are added into the blog in order to celebrate the victory tomorrow, the 21st day of April, 1836 of the Battle of San Jacinto.   Normally creditted to the efforts of Gen. Sam Houston, who truly was a bigger than life figure, the truth is that Houston was painfully wounded at the beginning of the battle, by a musket ball to the right foot.   It was Gen. (then Lt. Col.) Somervell, commander-in-charge, and the surprize rush of the limited cavalry of the Texian force of a bit fewer than 700 men.....attacking on a Sunday morning.   The head of cavalry squadron in the thickest of the fight  was Capt. Juan Seguin, an arch-enemy of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.   Major Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar was the overall commander of the mounted part of the Texian force, and he would later become a President of Texas for a term.
     The resolve of the Texian force to gain Independence, avenge the atrocities of Goliad and the Alamo allowed the inferior force to pin into a peninsula surrounded by a snake infested bayou, and then essentially destroy the effective force of an Army of 2,500 with superior munitions, armament, artillery, cavalry, stores, and so forth.
 

     Going back to Gen. Vicente Filisola, it was he who took control of the Mexican Army as it withdrew from San Jacinto.   Lopez de Santa Anna remained under arrest and would later be tranferred to Washington D.C. as an oddity and war-trophy of sorts.   He had been the best general in the field, but also the one most prone to err through arrogance and hubris.   Some say his membership in the Scottish Rite Masonic order saved him from a rough and ready gallows at San Jacinto, since Houston and Somervell were both brother Masons.

     Filisola was met with his columns by Urrea, who forced control from Filisola, and took command of the withdrawal.   The two men would argue and write accusations against one another, and each would write interesting, if self-serving accounts of their experiences during the War.   It is the opinion of El Gringo Viejo that Urrea was the better soldier and was truthful concerning his wishes for the good treatment of the Goliad prisoners of war.

      Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna blamed both of them for everything;  Urrea for arriving too late to San Jacinto, Filisola for not mucking through the mud with cannons and stores any faster (he actually moved 2,000 men, animals, and stores faster than Santa Anna had moved his Army away from San Antonio in pursuit of Houston's Army.)   Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was a lot like Obama in his ability to blame everything on everybody but himself.

Committed to the dull truth, which always seems to wind up being far more interesting than the false legends or any fiction.....El Gringo Viejo resigns the evening and promises to return to more tales that interest him, and he hopes, the OROGs everywhere.

El Gringo Viejo

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Thanks for spending your time with us.

A REPOST - This is a repost from our adventure from a few days ago, back by popular demand.....

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(This is a repost from back in July.  Various people inquire, and I offer explanations.  Yesterday, at a reception for a Rio Grande Valley notable's  birthday celebration, her 100th, perhaps a score of people inquired about our place in Mexico and my thoughts about the situation.  Several hundred people attended the home reception.   Their questions are reasonable and I feel obliged to begin a complex of answers for them and for the OROGs as well. So, finally I began telling folks to check this blog on Monday or Tuesday.   And so, here we are)

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     The day before yesterday, this humble servant had to go through the rigours of any person, something that I, a true English aristocrat (that is a self-deprecating joke folks), tend to resent, at least a bit.   This rigour involved having to deliver a motorcar, that being a Jeep Cherokee with over 150, 000 miles, and 16 years of service.  It is a very presentable vehicle, a gift from my first son, who is a girl, who apparently had the mistaken notion that because we had given vehicles to them (also old and wasted) they had some obligation to unload their junk on us.

     The other thing is, this Jeep Cherokee Laredo....the super Deluxe model....actually provided incredible service with only the normal brake jobs, tire repairs, hood-support pistons, etc. being required to keep it running.  We have turned down the equivalent in dollars from people encountered on the road in Mexico of 6,000 USD because the noble old beast was still pretty, clean and kempt on the inside, no oil burner, a bit of a quirky transmission (but welcome to anything with a Chrysler transmission), and ever so comfortable.  For a 2002 model of anything automotive to have so many reasonable and passionate suitors should be a complement.

     We opted to sell.....yes, sell....the Grand Dame to our Mayordomo, the fabled Sargento Mayor Alvaro....the man who assists during the presence of clients and who stands the door and the properties of the Quinta in my absence.   He has 15 years with us.   I charged him to take the vehicle, and we did it all on the up and up, legal - legal, according to the Mexican, Tamaulipan, and Texian vehicular transfer laws that are presently pertinent.

    Why sell, instead of deign and grant?  Because Alvaro is not a peon.  He is a contract person, with professional blue-collar licenses and credentials, and a Paladin who rides alone through life. He sees himself as neither my subordinate nor superior.  He is not even an employee, but rather, a consultant and mechanical and tourism engineer.  And he does it all, along with pushing my old carcass around in a wheelbarrow when present, with aplomb.

     Alvaro and Don Rafael's Secretary made it to Ciudad Victoria and then to the Quinta right on time, no real delays.  They were stopped by a Federal Highway Police officer.  He was confused because Alvaro had all the correct paperwork and everything was in order. He complained a little because there was no "little error" for which he could collect at least a little bit for his daughter's dental braces.   My guys took pity on him and gave him 50 pesos, and they were "released" after about a three minute delay.  A big improvement since the old days when a freshly nationalised vehicle being driven by two Mexicans would have cost 2,000 to 5,000 pesos in bribes to the highway patrol.....but that was back when elections were held but did not matter.

All Mexicans look alike.  Except
for the ones who look different. 
this one is Arabic, a Maronite
Catholic, whose family came
from Lebanon.

His name? Carlos Slim Harp.

Member of secret Roman
Catholic societies, such as Opus
Dei, is fervent 

anti-communist,
pro-American but is a

Democrat sympathiser.

He owns the New York Times.

Go figure.

     He also has a Mexican Peso triad of Mexican Treasury Notes that have 30 day, another at 90 day, and another at 180 day terms that he renovates at the appropriate time.   He deposits what we pay 1,000 pesos to each account at each term when he "renovates".  He had a considerable sum before he came to be associated with us, over 15 years ago.   The Mexican interest rates are between 5% and 7.5% depending on the term.  He lost money during the slide about a year and a half ago, and he has made it back in spades during the peso's recuperation of the last three months.  Such is the nature of playing Mexican paper.  The true rule, truth be known, is that he who is stupid enough to invest money in Mexico begins to appear wiser and wiser the longer he leaves his money on bank and Banco de Mexico term-definite paper.  Over any seven year period, one normally has moderate to significant returns.  No Mexican paper has ever defaulted in peso terms.
            That rule was followed by a fellow by the name of Carlos Slim, whose dull, boring day-to-day investment in Mexican paper resulted, indirectly, in his becoming the richest and/or among the top 10 richest people in the world.
     Besides being an apparatchik of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) the old government ruling party, Carlos was also the son of his father, a Beirut native businessman who did not want his family subjected to the Ottoman rule of Turkey and the conscription of his sons into the Ottoman Army.  They moved to Mexico in 1902 to join a already large existing Christian Lebanese group in Mexico City as well as in various places in the north and west of Mexico (Torreon, Chihuahua, Monterrey, Reynosa, Matamoros, San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, and Guadalajara).

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     But I diverge.  The boss followed me to the border and she took up position in a pleasant enough dinette associated with a nice gasoline station.   There she was to wait until I would return in an hour and a half or so, all things being equal.  I ordered up an iced-tea with lime only, and then took off for the Reynosa Bus Terminal....which lies a little less than a half-mile from the main twin - bridges connecting the McAllen - Reynosa metropolis.   As I crossed over, it was noticed that the pedestrian inspection line was almost exactly one mile long, and it was not moving.   It could be seen that the vehicular lanes....about six of them....were also pretty much frozen in time.
     But, I as the true keeper of Excalibur and filled with the powers of Zobbozolom, knew that by the time I should return, the line would be evaporated, and the American customs and immigration officers would have processed everyone in the line with the efficiency and alacrity of the American administrative imperative.
     We proceeded to the Bus Terminal, found a fine parking space at the "estacionamiento" adjacent to the Terminal.  Clean, professional gate keeper, even pleasant.   I enter, saluting the Mexican Army Sergeant, who is in full flak-jacket, French automatic rifle, combat presentation.  There are two full platoons at the Bus Station.  The un-accustomed are turned off by this, but the deportment of the people at the Terminal is..."Thank the good Lord God Almighty that we have more and better fire-power than the Cockroaches, right here, right now.   People come and go without a second look at the soldiers....the whom of which will lay their lives down to protect the flag and the citizenry.
     I spoke with a lieutenant and a really ranking sergeant,  identifying myself by my number, rank,  and branch as a veteran and exchanging salutes with them.  They were more than compliant.   They indicated that they were at the Station as a mis-direction maneouver, because from this point, and due to the outlay of the really good streets leading away from the Terminal, they could respond to almost anywhere in Reynosa within seven minutes.
    There were hundreds of people coming and going every 15 minutes.   The best count of arrivals and departures of better 2nd Class, 1st Class, and DeLuxe busses arriving and leaving was 51 in the nearly 1.5 hours that I was stuck there.  Alvaro's bus coming up from Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the State of Tamaulipas would arrive about 25 minutes late, due to the intense inspection by the Army at a checkpoint about 90 miles south of Reynosa.  Dogs, federal police, but mainly Mexican Army personnel..(many having received American and / or Israeli and / or Egyptian/ or Brittanic training) check through luggage and personal effects at that point. The base also has a really fine "super clinic" with a couple of operating rooms and overnight facilities for ill or infermed people, and a large vaccination and general attention facility.  It is a marvel.  But it is also a pain in the neck when someone is waiting at the terminal, and he has  Brittanic blood. 
     On each of three occasions, El Gringo Viejo seeks information about the "new arrival terms" the boy (and yes, Virginia, I can say 'boy' because I am over 70 years of age) searches the position of the bus upon which Alvaro is mounted.  The last time, he makes contact with the driver and/or the relief driver on the closed circuit telephone and they say they are late because of this or that, they will be at the terminal at such and such minute.  And that is the way it was.
     About 27 minutes late....through no fault of their own....a still bright and shiny 1st class special bus comes into the TRANSPAIS bus company's parking area and empties its passengers.  To shorten the story, Alvaro and Don Rafael's secretary, a man whose name I still have not programmed into my brain, come up and we immediately go back out to the parking lot where the Jeep is.   Alvaro sets about attaching the plasti-carton (a real license, very solid construction, stronger than a metal plate) license plate on the rear of the Jeep.  He puts the required windshield sticker "at the point of the top of the head of the co-pilot" according to the instructions and it is placed on the inside so that it cannot "removed by pedestrian".     We exchange all of the documentation, titles, permits, and Alvaro's first payment, which is a fortune for the working man in Mexico.  And I drive the Jeep for the last time as owner (with my wife), over to the Mexican entry area.  That is where the pedestrian crossing is accessed.

     It is also where I learn that Alvaro will not be driving back, but rather Don Rafael's secretary, because he is very familiar with Reynosa, having many people there working in the Maquila, as it is said on the Frontier (the County/City of Reynosa has 40,000 people, mainly younger to middle-aged females, working in Reynosa...at 3 to 10 times the minimum wage - 16 to 60 dollars/day..., plus housing allotment aimed at ownership, plus Social Security - medical, and scholarships for minors in family, plus one really nice meal).

    I show them, to be sure, where they can turn and follow the way to Santa Engracia and / or Ciudad Victoria and then travel a few hundred yards to the place where I shall say good-bye to them and then return to Gringo-Land on foot.  They leave, I go, and it is a joyous moment because I am only about 20 minutes late now.   The exchange of documents, and the transfer to the Mexican port of entry....very few minutes.....Hi - Ho, Hi - Ho, It's off to work I go....and I trudge towards the official pathway for the pedestrians who are going into the Gringolandia.   And then, guess what.....?

     The one mile line of the morning is no longer there, and so I smile and realise that my path is  bathed in fortunate indulgence.   Then, after turning the first big curve, a huge line...not the one mile line, but the one kilometre line.....not as much, but still a disaster.   The line moves very slowly.  My numbness of the forearms and calves and feet after about 30 minutes of very, very slow movements of the line, I had to "jump the line" and I approached the man about 200 yards up the line...who was controlling the line.   I told him the truth...that my electrolytes were diminishing, and yes I had bought some dry cookies and water, but a three or four hour wait would result either in my death or my incapacitation.
     I begged forgiveness and indulgence from the people I have passed up, and then I began the most arduous slide and half-stumble to the entry into the Customs and Immigration pedestrian inspection. The people left behind have a two to four hour wait....in the 104 degree heat, lined up like sheep for the slaughter....while the line moves ahead at ten or twelve people every 15 minutes.  Not very encouraging for a line of 750 yards.
     The problem is, that these people are legal.  Some are citizens, as is your humble servant.  Others have gone to great trouble and expense to obtain the border crossing permit that they use daily or weekly.  It costs about 250 dollars for the 10 year permit.  But one must render up the place where his grandmother is buried, and put his grandmother in a Dempster Dumpster.   (Almost, but not quite).  The "purification" is neither easy nor cheap.  And these people are left in to the heat, wind, old and very, very young....for hours never ending.
      The slobs and their supposed children coming from Central America to cross the Rio Grande as "refugees" last Summer and the Summer before last to cross over and are given everything and allowed to enter the country without even a birth certificate, while they go and glob onto an El Salvadoran barrio where the "immigrant" immediately also globs onto food stamps, section 8,  AFDC, Head Start, this free, that free, and never to report to their administrative hearing at the immigration hearing.  This is the case for 85% of the women who brought supposed children to "escape the violence" in their home countries.  They are aided by Catholic Charities and the Episcopal Church of America.....

     Frequently, these children are sold into sex-slavery or worse.  The Mara Salvatrucha are capable of things that normal people cannot even grasp, intellectually.  The Callejon 18 are the same.   It is nothing to them to sell a 12 year old girl to be skinned alive and butchered for the pleasure of one or several of these monsters to watch and video.   They laugh as it goes on.
      And we are lectured by the  Democrats about immigration.   The monsters do their stuff here, because we still have some semblance of due process unless the malcreants are dumbo 10th Amendment people.  In Honduras, if on rare occasion the Army happens upon these sub-humanoids, they simply machine-gun them into hamburger.  The Salvatruchas and allied types laugh as the bullets splatter their own brains.
       It is difficult for normal Americans.....people who know who Fred Flintstone and Lawrence Welk were and are.....to understand what kind of scum have entered into the United States since the last  Amnesty (1987).....and more especially during the Regime of Obama.   It is during that last episode that the negative impact was programmed and hoped for, in order to hasten that long desired fundamental "Transformation of America". It was necessary to induct as many unqualified people into the country as possible so as to convert the glistening city on the side of the mountain of Reagan into the Favelas of Slums where one is lucky to drink the blackish-yellowish-greyish effluent of the open sewers of Shariah and Socialism brought to us by Barry Soetoro and his minions.

    But, once again, I digress.  Finally I pass through the American Pedestrian Immigration Inspection, there are only two agents working six inspection positions.  The vehicular inspection is almost equally stationary. Your humble servant, after over an hour in the sun and standing around....nothing nearly as bad as the people he left behind....passes through without even a glance.  The officer does not even open my passport.
      I walk another 1/3 of a mile to the place where I left my boss at 10:00 am,  almost  literally stumbling away from the bridge compound during the latter part of the middle of the day.   By 14:00 hours, I make it to the Valero Station with its nice Stripes dinette, but the Boss has seen me and runs to our run-about and drives to pick me up.  She is apologizing!!!  I am the one who presided over holding everyone up, but she who has done all the real "blind waiting" is apologising to me.   Now all the OROGs know why I never "left home".   But I am exhausted.  

    With Alvaro's first payment and a few other shekels, and my pitiful old pre-corpse pretty much spent, we go back to our abode.  There I endure until being able to report all of the above to the OROG community and any others who feel the need to venture into absolute boredom.  The Boss just continues on her 14 - 20 hour daily circuit of Mom, profession, Old Gringo Geezer care, accounting for our businesses and our accounts and running the homestead.   I, of course, take care of Red China, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and the Democrats.  And other important stuff.

This entry should be enough to bore almost everyone to death.  But I render it to my Consuegros (my daughter's in-laws) first, then to the OROGs, and then to the Facebook people who have grown to constitute the vast majority of our listenership.   Thank you all for your time and attention.

El Gringo Viejo

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Republican Failure? Or Failure of McCain, Murkowski, and Collins?

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       Perhaps you were one of many voices that spoke but could not be heard due to the deafening roar of back door political maneuvering. The notion that we are being pushed into a subsidised system speaks volumes. The dull-thinkers and those who want to be fair are following both the Pied Piper and the Tailors who made the Emperor's fine raiment. Slobs and dullards who are really glad to have "free medical" are truly slobs and dullards. "Let the Rich Pay!!!" is the battle cry.

      Such a practice has always and must aways wind up in bankruptcy. It is as simple as that. Right now there is no problem. The officials are herding the sheep-people into the log and frame barn. To-morrow the people will be waiting around for their "free medical, food, housing, schooling, transportation, and lottery tickets" and suddenly they will smell smoke. A third of them will be told to take an aspirin and come back in 90 days. When they are dying of starvation and lack of medical services, they will struggle up one more time to the Bastille and the guillotines to rally once more, "Tax the Rich and Off with their heads!!!!" We have painted ourselves into a desperate Box Canyon and there is no good outcome. Thanks a million, McCain....(I shall never refer to you again as Senator, nor Commander, nor "sir", nor shall I salute you).

     Why would El Gringo Veijo say such a dastardly thing?  After all, think of how McCain sacrificed, refusing to take liberty from the communist North Vietnamese and the Hanoi Hilton as a Prisoner of War unless his American and allied mates were likewise released.  His refusal of repatriation brought him several years more of torture and brutal treatment.   However, McCain was always a steel-wire bristle-brush.....having been a bit problematic during his youth,  and according to some, even during his early days as a flight-trainee and later as a fully qualified F - 4 Phantom driver.
     He performed heroically at the event of the fire on board the Carrier Forrestal when a missile dislodged and exploded on deck....when there were numerous warplanes "parked upstairs".  Some say that McCain performed only as he should have.....others say he performed heroically.   There was a lot of intense fire and munitions and kerosene in the wings, etc.   Losses for the boat itself came up to over 70,000,000 1967 yankee dollars.   The planes lost were a separate loss, some 16 totally destroyed.

     Then he comes home...makes friends with John Kerry, calls himself a Republican, marries Budweiser Beer West, and begins his not so slow drift to reasonable....the left....to the idiosyncratic.....and to the irrational.  Most recently he joined two other liberal Democrats who attend the Republican Convention every four years and talk about the need to protect a woman's right to choose, and blocked the will of 48 Republicans who had been dragged kicking and screaming into accord that would initiate a watered-down beginning of the dismantling of the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative (OSMI).
     One could ask,"What difference would it have made to vote to approve?"  To begin,  the bill would have had to been passed over to Conference with the House of Representatives where further hammering, welding, and boiler-plating would be done.   Once everything could be worked out, something a little less bad than the OSMI would be put into place, and the governors in the rust belt would have their Medicaid with which to buy votes.   The governors and State congresses where deficit spending is prohibited will take what little improvement has been made and try to build on it....primarily by getting out of the way of the private, job-producing sector and the American way of innovation and community involvement (without the aid of a community organiser).
     And, once proving that we could actually turn the Ship of  State ever so slightly to the right, backed up by a Supreme Court that has a counterbalance to the "conservative" Chief Justice, we could have begun a return to some semblance of normalcy in terms of governance by the Central Government.

     Oddly, the two women who saved their States from the ruin of abandoning the OSMI, thereby relegating their States securely into the comfort zone of predictable disaster,  they are now proudly on the path to that Great Dust Bin of History.
    John McCain, in order to prove once and for all that he was a real live Maverick, assured the continuation of medical insurance collapse in the State of Arizona.   Rates for those who must subsidise the parasitical and slothful and Congressional members and staffs, have skyrocketed in Arizona....and in Maine and Alaska, quite frankly.
      So, the terrible trio has taught everyone a lesson.   That lesson is, "One must  beware of what he has or else he will receive something he wished for before he voted to find out what was in it, or not for the hardworking American people and those most in need when the rich finally manage to pay their fair share."   That last sentence might well soon replace "In God We Trust" on our currency, as we begin to understand Nancy Pelosisms more completely. 

     We are genuinely talking about worms who have no deductive reasoning and who are completely self-consumed.   It is time for at least three primary challenges.   To think, even Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul voted for this thing, knowing that once passed, it would go into Conference for further open-heart surgery and athlete's foot medicine.   Ted Cruz and Mike Lee voted for it, so as to keep the inning alive. Almost every liberal Republican, Conservative Republican, and Libertarian Republican voted  for this somewhat useless, somewhat interesting bill....except for three....three egotistical stumblebums.

More later,
El Gringo Viejo

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Mr. President, Mr. President....Just one question....!

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Mr. President:

     You speak and twitter almost continuously about loyalty.  Two quick questions.  Why do you demand loyalty of staff and cabinet heads so frequently?    Also, even as you demand loyalty, you exhibit little or none to Attorney General Jefferson Sessions, who put all his chips on the table for you during the campaign for the Republican nomination.   He has also demonstrated during his service to the Nation, to have been a loyal, able, and noble servant to both you and the Nation.   Can you advise us of any other heads that must roll in the near future?

     Your behaviour and posturing bespeak of some strange and spurious impulses.  It would be wise to remember that many people supported you, not because of your bluster and overly spontaneous adolescent personality, but because of the fact that your main opponent wreaked and still wreaks of the rot of corruption and all nature of evil and illegal activity.  In short, many of us determined that you were not as bad as she was/is bad.

Thank you for your kind attention,

David Christian Newton

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