Comments That Must Be Entered Into the Record - Vol. II

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“As a kid, I never asked my mom for documentation when she talked about our Native American heritage -- what kid would? But I knew my father’s family didn’t like that she was part Cherokee and part Delaware, so my parents had to elope. Let me be clear, I never asked for and never received any benefit because of my heritage. The people who’ve hired me have said they didn’t even know about it. I’m Elizabeth Warren and I approved this message. Scott Brown can continue attacking my family, but I’m going to keep fighting for yours.”

     

     The bilge posted above were words spoken by Senatorette Pocahontas II in defence of her Sacred Honour as a real, live Injun.  It becomes more ridiculous as each moment passes.  To begin…to be "part Cherokee and part Delaware" is possible…but highly unlikely.   If she lived in Oklahoma, the likelihood of despair within the family for "marrying outside of the race" when it was a "breed Cherokee" or even a full-blooded Cherokee is very, very, very unlikely unless her family was totally white-trash.   Most White families, such as mine with Pennsylvania, New York, and Tennessee strains, would have strutted around as if they were now "approved" had they qualified as in-laws by the Cherokee or Chickasaw or other such Nations / Tribes. 

     While the Cherokee and the Iroquois Nations were ethnically related and had similar language construct, they were different in many ways.  The Delaware and the Cherokee were not closely in contact or even with treaty, one tribe/nation to the other tribe/nation.   Nor were the Delaware associated formally or by intermarriage particularly, with the other Nations associated with the Cherokee…those being nations such such as the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Alabama, Coushatta, Caddo…and to a lesser extent the Seminole (and yes, Virginia, there were other smaller tribe/nations in this noble cluster).

     Some have postulated that the Kickapoo were an agrupation of bandits, exiles, and malcontents who had been expulsed from the Eastern Nations (east of the Mississippi) and the Northern Nations (what is now known as the Great Plains, the Missouri Basin, and what is now South-central Canada.   Your humble commentator is not an exponent of that conclusion.

     Scott Brown is not attacking your family, Pocahontas II…and this writer urges that you  "ask not for whom the bells toll, (because) they toll for thee".   It is you, Pocahontas II, who is attacking your family.  It is you who presses forward with your ridiculous positioning that you have some minuscule portion of your bloodlines that present American Indian markers.

     Your DNA sample…something like kindergarten compared to a Ph.d of astro-nuclear engineering..is flawed, if you think that 00.06 - 00.001024 of One Per Cent qualifies you as an"indigenous American".   Dr. Bustamante, your analyst of choice, from Stanford University clearly stated that for lack of DNA strands at hand (the American Nation / Tribes maintain their own banks of DNA and genealogy), he used aboriginal strains that came from Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador .              
     Many of them work hand-in-hand with the Latter Day Saints who have done billions of dollars and many millions of man hours in the tedious task of following genealogies to the absolute most distant point possible.   Many of the Nations / Tribes also have their own research which is quite good in terms of quality, diagnosis, and proof.  To wit:

     "Warren did not take a commercially available DNA test, but the analysis was done in a similar manner. A private lab in Georgia tested her sample, according to The Boston Globe, and Bustamante, a geneticist who has consulted for DNA-testing companies such as 23andMe, AncestryDNA, and Helix, analyzed the raw data. He compared more than 600,000 markers in her DNA with a database of people who live around the world.

     Geneticists, however, have historically had a fraught relationship with American Indian tribes, and few members in North America have given samples for these databases. Instead, Bustamante compared Warren’s DNA with that of indigenous peoples in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru. Critics of Warren have already seized on this to question the validity of her DNA test—ironically, mirroring some of the skepticism of those who have been criticizing Republicans’ insistence that Warren get a DNA test all along."

 

Gen. Stand Watie, CSA
The last Confederate General officer
to surrender to Union Military.  Waite was
a Cherokee Indian, hero of his people and
hero of the Confederacy.   We laud his
service.
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   To overstep those entities who have done and are doing the research, causes "real, live Indians" to be  very resentful of people who declare Indian ancestry when such is not a probative and genuine case.  That resentment is intensified when that substandard Caucasian uses un-proven citizenship as an Indian Nation / Tribe member for the purpose of gaining position and/or increased salary as a "discriminated -against minority".
     Pocahontas II declared such to be the case when applying to the University of Pennsylvania graduate school, and then again later when she entered law school, which I believe was Harvard or some such other marxist citadel.

     THE FACTS ARE, if the samples came from Mexico as stated…from whence most of the Indigenous have DNAs more closely related to pelo-Polynesia and Japan…and from Peru' and Colombia…who, guess what?…have DNAs more closely related to pelo-Polynesia and not the Anthabaskan strain that is more Mongolian in similarity and which is associated with the North American Nations of Indigenous, then Pocahontas II essentially proved that she has absolutely NOT ONE DROP OF AMERICAN INDIAN BLOOD.

     We sincerely hope that a money-order of pre-payment accompanied the package that was sent to Dr. Bustamante.  In a way, I think that he was giving strong signals that he did not use Southeastern Indigenous American markers…and it would be up to curmudgeons such as your humble servant and people who have had at least a modicum of understanding of anthropology, sociology, geography, and medical/genetic research to announce what we have announced above.

    We repeat.  My two brothers and I were filled with the lore, and there is some probative proof found in census material, that we had both northern (Mohegan) and Southern (Cherokee) strains…"way back when"…in our blood lines.   BUT, we never, none of us…ever used such lore, even with proof, to take financial advantage or gain due to that probability.
   
   What we did take was a measure of pride, and no more.

     Shame on you, Elizabeth Warren.  I further your injury by advising you that the Cherokee Nation and most, almost all,  of the Indians of the South, fought for the Confederacy.

Checkmate. 

El Gringo Viejo

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Comments that must be entered into the record…Vol. I

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Princess Hocumpocum of the Tribe
Pyschopathosum
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     It has finally been proven beyond any doubt.  The above pictured Indian Princess, wearing her full-scale Woolworth's Official Injun Headdress is certainly a real live, full-blooded, original Indian faux-royalty.   According to a Stanford University, with odds of 62 - 1 in favour of being a stark, raving mad marxist…he declares Princess Hocumpocum (aka- Pocahontas) is somewhere between 1 / 32nd and 1 / 528th of part or whole American Indian ancestry.

     Possible DNA contaminants, might be and could well be, such DNA indicators could also be Polynesian, Japanese, Ainu, Yupik (Inuit or Eskimo), as well as the commonly regarded Indian groups such as Iroquois, Cherokee, Arapaho, Apache and other such AthaBaskan and Haudenosaunee groupings.   So we could reasonably assume that the odds are 1 / 64th and 1 / 1056th…or that the entire DNA test was not accurate or Princess Hocumpocum had one of her very close Indian friends "do the swab" and send it in to the esteemed Sanford University august halls and chambers.

     As an aside, our lore within the family…both paternal and maternal…deal with two young women (very young), who at widely different times and places were introduced into the bloodlines of my father and my mother.   One was Mohegan, an expulsed woman who offered herself up as a maid-servant or an indentured person.  She turned out to be the daughter of a highly placed chief of the Mohegan nation.  She was rebellious against her father and was therefore ordered out of the geographic and social scope of her large and privileged tribe (extended cultural unit).

     Later, as she changed from an adolescent to an adult, her attractiveness and intelligence did, in fact, attract a successful covered bridge / water-powered gristmill builder, and they apparently lived happily ever after, because I am here.   These events occurred in the 1690's in colonial Vermont.

     Supposedly, while this was going on, another girl was "self-deported", because she had a problem with her father (a regional chief) and his constrictive social prescriptions.   She ran away, and would wind up at a preacher's "way-station" where people could eat, rest up, and continue their journeys to and from the Eastern Seaboard in Virginia and the great expanse to the west.  We think that the proprietor was an Anglican because the tavern part of the business has beer and spirits.

     The girl was most probably a Delaware, and was, according to the lore of the family, quite quick of mind.   And, of course, she grew to be an attractive woman and a worthy asset to the steadily growing tavern, restaurant, accommodations, livery, and supply stop (like a colonial shopping mall).   The owner, who was a Rogers, I believe, married this "hand maiden", and they had a significant issue…among them a grandmother of the ninth order to this writer.   That woman wound up in North Carolina and married a man who had a grandmother who was half-Cherokee.
This occurred in Orange County, Carolina Colony in the 1740s.

     Therefore, I am a real live Injun…by Sanford and Son University standards.  My brothers and I have approximately 1 / 32nd Indian ancestry.  We do not deny it, and we have never used this fact to be considered "more qualified" as an applicant for any position.  We, all three, were/are aghast and furious still with the "jackass'' President Andrew Jackson who was complicit in the beating of the drum and engineering of the dislocation of the Cherokee and Chickasaw and Cree Nations from their ancestral lands in The South.

     That sell-out by a Southerner (Jackson) to the investment and emigration-invitational to the world and the New York Banking community has and will always boil the blood of those three brothers who were sons of their father and mother.   And we were and are Caucasian "100%" (but not quite).  Two people agreed with us entirely…a fellow by the name of David Crockett and another by the name of Sam Houston, who was a fully and formally adopted Cherokee by the hand of the highly regarded Chief John Jolly (Oolooteekah in the Cherokee)
     Houston lived twice among the Cherokee…once as a post-adolescent runaway, and then again in 1829.   That year ushered in the Trail of Tears (aka - The Dislocation) when he accompanied the Cherokee, along with John Jolly, on the trek by scores of thousands to a place called Ohkla  Homa  (Red Peoples' Land in the Choctaw language).
   The year of 1829 was Jackson's first year in an eight-year regime.  Houston went to one of Jackson's famous White House Balls dressed in full-formal Cherokee garb, purposefully, to embarrass his one-time political "God-father".   It was the insult of one President (Texas) against another (USA).

     For all the bumps and grinds of the Newton brothers, it was one of those areas where concurrence and agreement held forth twixt all three …The Southern Indians (who almost uniformly supported the Confederacy), received a raw deal in that they were a sincere people who had signed the peace-treaties and become friends AND relatives of the White Man.

   Finally…not my father…not my mother…neither brother…nor your humble servant…ever declared privilege based upon the fact that we had Indian blood, although, we were always quick to point out that we did, when conversations turned to those topics.  It is a Southern addiction.  And please remember this last, and oft repeated rejoinder, that "I have a bit of Indian blood"…is true among White Southerners in over 90% of all cases.   But a 1 / 1058th possible Indian blood strain really does not make for the Real Pocahontas (naughty girl).   And preferential employment consideration due to that 1 / 1058th portion of blood as an "oppressed minority" is beyond ridiculous.
     We also would add that our daughter-in-law, a truly noble, beautiful, and talented lady, the mother of three of our grandchildren, just recently began her registration in the Chickasaw Tribe.  We were truly overjoyed, because it was something we felt she should do for many reasons.  Her percentage of documentable Chickasaw ancestry is 3 / 16ths, a realistic and serious amount.  To register, and undergo the ancestry research, etc. requires $2,500.00 to start.   It is a serious business, and the various Indian Nations during these times, especially in the South, are meticulous and serious.   Once again, we are very proud that she has taken these steps.

I resign to your comfort, and shall return relatively quickly during the coming hours.  Thanks each and all for Your continued interest and readership.
El Gringo Viejo

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Not precise renditions, but essentially correct statements from History

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    Your humble observer of the American Experience recognises that there is really no point to "winning" the point of this matter.   But, it is true that the quotations posted above are, while not precisely accurate in all respects, are true restatements of each man's expressed…both written and spoken…viewpoints concerning the slavery and Negro "situation".

Thanks for your attention, as usual!

El Gringo Viejo

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Several Rapid-fire points of a public and private nature

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     Perhaps first we should show a bit of the mystic by revealing the mystique of the adjacent properties of the Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre and the adjacent Hacienda de La Vega.  These are places that have seen great upheaval, wars, civil unrest, massive investment and profits, the establishment of a rural "middle-class" (very rare in those times - 1870 / 1990), and a history of European contact since the year 1606.

    The setting is not the most impressive, perhaps, in terms of all geographical backdrops on Planet Earth, but it is way on up there in the major leagues of such phenomena.  One reason for this is the complexity of the adjacency of five or six different climate and geological zones within sight of each other, and because it is grouped into an area of only 100,000 square miles.

     The setting for the Quinta is almost like a dream, in many ways.   The picture to the left shows the brooding and understated El Cautivo section of the Sierra Madre Oriental, giving face to the East, towards the Gulf of Mexico, some 105 miles away.   The most distant ridge measures right at 10,000 feet above sea level.

     Adjacent, and at the very foot of the mountains, is the dense oak and bramble forest that extends out from the higher elevations.   Pine and tropical red oak dominates from 2,000 fasl up to about 5,000 fasl.  Due to the "diversity" of vegetation and the benevolent AND at times violent climate and weather conditions, we are treated to one of the greatest "diversity" concentrations of wilderness birds, reptiles, mammals, and butterflies on the planet.

     At the foot of the scene to the left is the magnificent planting of the famous Italian Limes which have become the rage, overnight, from Paris to New York City to Mexico City and a million other places.  They have become mandatory for the fancy saloons and for the use in first-class and deluxe kitchens everywhere.  The Persian lime had been dominating, but before we lament the passing of any of the Lime races, fear not, they all have great numbers of followers…including Ernest Hemingway's favourite, the Key Lime.   El Gringo Viejo is a non-racist in Lime terms, using any and all that come within reach.  BUT!!…the Italian lime is definitely the "aristocratic lime" in my opinion.

     Most recently our neighbour, the owner of the Hacienda de La Vega, had a couple of well-placed friends along with a very pleasant and intelligent fellow from Naples, Italy (homeland of the Italian lime).  One should be comforted when he is producing something that important personalities from the place of origin of the item being produced has come to buy that same product.  That is especially true when the important personality is deeply involved in the business personally as an investor, producer, and purchaser.

     The Santa Engracia area has been the region where Coca-cola de Mexico SAdeCV and Coca-cola of Atlanta, Inc, contended for the limes produced in there…dating back to the 1970s.  It is, as I intone, a mystical place.

     The blossoms on the left are, in the vernacular of the locale, blooms of the garlic vine.  The reason?  It is because when the blossoms open, the have an overpowering scent of garlic.  The flower does, in fact, have a similar presentation as a regular garlic flower, but it is much larger, and…of course…this garlic is different because it comes from a vine, and not a single stem from a single plant.   This particular plant happens to be nearly adjacent to our little adobe hut, about 9 feet away from the vine.   We would have had much more, possibly, had not our previous Winter been so insistent, persistent, and just darned cold.   But, I did notice that there were several late-sprouting vines, so perhaps during the last days of Autumn, we might have a whole bunch of garlic and garlic blossoms.

     El Gringo Viejo, at his age and grumpy disposition, usually sleeps little during the night and wanders the property, watching the sky for UFOs or the blinking lights of passenger jets plying the routes twixt Mexico City and Dallas or Houston.   There are various "Highways in the Sky" that have frequent commercial flights, and it is pleasant to see them fly over at 38,000 feet.  There are other puddle-jumpers, mainly Embraers, that serve shorter hauls and rarely go over 25,000 feet (they are really good aircraft - mules of the fleet, so to speak - very comfortable).

     The skies give all nature of opportunity for "night vision", including satellites, meteors, and things that are hard to describe without appearing to be an escapee from a manicomio (mental hospital) from Ciudad Victoria.  At night, one can almost feel the eyes of a hundred large and small mammals and perhaps a hundred spirits who decided that they would just as soon stay in Santa Engracia (Holy Grace…the name of our area) as to go to Heaven…or some other place.
     The above picture with the moon, the palm, and the silhouette of the Sierra Madre Oriental's section known as La Sierra del Cautivo (captive), centre'd at the living compound of the hacendado (owner of) de La Vega is a happy haunting, reserved for the old fools who like to stumble around at 03:50 in the morning looking for things of interest.   El Gringo Viejo has learned how to use his camera with a little better proficiency.
     One or two last images is the wooliness of the grounds of the home compound of the Quinta, located about 200 yards to the East of the "Moon Picture" above.  Finally, after a long Spring, and then a longer Summer, and then a pretty good start into Autumn, we had an episode of one week with 10 to 15 inches of rain over a fortnight.   The remaining "Summer's heat" cast down from the Sun during those last warm days provoked a very positive response to our gardens and surrounding trees and other vegetation.
     Once again, we can show one and all a bit of a tropical - Alpine - desertine - riverine wonderland, all rolled into one humble picture of one humble, mud home (but with electricity, natural gas, flush toilets, hot showers, cable television, world connected telephone, and even a bit of air conditioning that works!!!).   It's almost like a real place!

butterfly weed

    We shall leave one and all for a bit, in order to attend to chores for a day or so.  The picture of the butterfly weed is left to your pleasure…the butterflies like it too, because the "baby butterflies" eat the plant (apparently to death) when they are "pre-butterfly worms" (caterpillars).   Some folks try to kill the "worms", not realising the "worms" are baby butterflies.   So, this photo is given in memory of those babies.

El Gringo Viejo

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Lamentation concerning the entire nature of public discourse and process...

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Holton-Arms Head of School Susanna A. Jones Praised Blasey Ford 'Using Her Voice’

It was reported that this is the statement of Holton-Arms Head of School Susanna A. Jones:

“In a recent article The Washington Post described an alleged assault of one of our alumnae by Supreme Court nominee Brent M Kavanagh that occurred in the early 1980s, while she was a student at Holton-Arms. In these cases, it is imperative that all voices are heard. As a school that empowers women to use their voices, we are proud of this alumna for using hers.”

    Little matter, of course, whether the voice makes sense or not… Ah! the comfort of modernity and relativity.

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     The children locked in animal care cages during the Obama Administration?  Solution?   The Obsolete Press and the Democrat Party apparatchiks blame Trump and the Deplorables who are killing everybody all the time with their guns and Bibles.   And…all the while…imprisoning children in dog cages, three years before having been elected to the Presidency.

    The Obsolete Press and Democrat Ghouls join hands and walk into the sunset, pleased that they have saved the Nation again from the extremist and racist hordes of Fascists who actually think water runs downhill (natural law) and there is such a thing as a difference between Right  and Wrong…that there is a Divine Force and a Satanic Force…

    Since the end of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Daniel Moynihan and a few other exceptions…perhaps James Earl Carter…we have witnessed the steady denigration among Democrats of the concept of English / American Common Law and the concept of local control and fiscal sanity…organisation of culture and society based upon the common impulses programmed by the Creator unto His children and all such creatures who reproduce and care for their young.

     We witness now the improbable scene of a woman who is a Doctor of Psychology, a professor…who suddenly…during therapy, arrives at the realisation that all of her tensions and troubled jumble in her mind was the result of an assault against her person at some time in the past.  She is unclear about the precise time…even within the parameters of two years before or two years after.

       Nor can she remember with precision the place where the assault against her person took place.   She thinks that it might have here…or perhaps it was there, or it might have been somewhere else.

        She declares that there were six boys who tormented her and threw her into a dark bedroom.   Or it might have been four…or may two…but she cannot remember, clearly.   She does remember being clumsily handled and accosted by a boy.

     

 Wanted Dead or Alive
for the crimes of being
a probable Republican,
 Extreme Normalcy,
 uncontrollable groping
impulses, and kicking cats

     Of course, she managed to escape, because males are terribly stupid and even though they outnumbered the hapless girl she slipped their attention and managed to flee from the place that she cannot remember and ran with abandon to the home of her parents where she would find safety and the comfort of protection from a mother and a father.   Or maybe it was to a friend's house…or was it the the Log Cabin Burger and Pancake Ranch - "Always Open 25 hours per day - 8 days a week!!.

      Well, maybe not so much.   For some reason or another, the girl does not inform anyone…unless it is her somewhat distant female "friends" in whom she confides things she cannot remember now with any clarity.

     What should obviously warrant a police report and the initiation of a standard felony sexual assault investigation by the appropriate constabulary and prosecuting office…apparently was not an option.  It might have been because her fingernails hadn't dried enough, or because her false eyelashes (made to make her look "older"?) weren't sticking on,  "just so".   Or perhaps it was whatever…

     Fast forward to the present.  Something torments her.  She goes to counselling, apparently along with her husband or significant other.  She learns from the analyst that all of her torment is brought forward by long repressed horrors and fright suffered at the hands of somebody who has been put forward as a possible member of the United States Supreme Court.

    She knows that individual from her past because… uh, he went to the private boys' school that was associated with her private girls' school.   And uh, all the boys from there were wild drunks.  She knew and still knows that fact, and not only those facts, but she was actually sexually assaulted by that guy that TRUMP named to the Supreme Court.
     And she can identify him, although she hasn't seen him in person for 35 to 40 years.  She knows that he is an anti-abortion type, and that he is against women, and that he is a bad person because he is a Republican and has always been against women's issues, minorities, Eskimos, cute animals, children, a majority of the minorities, and lesbian native american reverse-retransgendered male Greenpeace activists.

    So! Press on! Resist!  Me Too!!!

       She decides to send an innocent letter to a doddering old woman who clings unto her California Senate seat as though it were a life preserver on stormy seas.
  
     That Senator is noteworthy because for the last 20 years, she has had a chauffeur who just happened to be a spy for the Red Chinese Communist government…and now she has a letter from a woman…a Doctor of Psychology…who declares that the new Supreme Court Justice-to-be sexually assaulted her 35 or 40 years ago.

    The letter also demands that the Senator not release this information, and that she not identify the forlorn victim in any way.  She also says that she will not under any circumstance appear in open hearings with the Offender present, and she also wants the FBI to do an investigation concerning this very important offence.

    Little matter that the FBI does not do investigations.  Little matter that the FBI is so horribly compromised now as a co-conspirator in a felonious intrigue pertaining to crimes of process and content against the present President that it would be difficult for that agency to do anything for or against this 15 year old, women' s activist psychologist, whose main claim to fame are two things;   First, wearing "vagina hats" in public, and second , being the most widely despised professor, as rated by her students, on the faculty.  Main complaints by the students? -  the good professor shames the students without cause, shrieks at times about points that she feels the students are not ingesting mentally, being explosive, sarcastic, and caustic towards students who have legitimate questions to ask during class.   It is also felt by the majority of students who have this woman as an instructor that the professor has certain favourites in her class…

     Now comes the 15 year old victim of sexual assault, demanding that she be allowed to set the the parameters of a hearing concerning her complaints that have rested for 35 to 40 years in the bat-belfry of the mind of a woman who has learned well how to practice hubris and demand compliance.   Those parameters in this matter will include:

           (1)   …that the presence of the presumed candidate for elevation to the position of Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America is prohibited in the presence of the aggrieved 15 year old victim of sexual assault that was so serious that the assault could not be reported to her parents or the constabulary.

            (2)    …that the assumed guilty party,  beyond any doubt, reasonable or otherwise, be required to render his version of this matter and mount his defence before the aggrieved 15 year old victim renders her testimony.   This is especially important because it will correct the error of several hundred years of a defendant being required to respond to the charges…not visa-versa.

     The offended 15 year old victim would prefer that the criminal confess to his sins and crimes, and then the procedure would be for the 15 year old victim to  agree to accept the confessions, and she will have a chance to add on several score other  known crimes that the defendant left out of his mea culpa.

     This new procedure will correct centuries of prohibition against the aggrieved parties not being allowed to post an unlimited number of "forgotten crimes and sins" against good people like the Doctor of Psychology has had to suffer.

         (3)     …that the date of appearance of the aggrieved, 15 year old victim is to be left to her convenience while the rest of the world awaits the time the 15 year old victim has had a chance for her nail polish to dry.   Perhaps Thursday…perhaps next month…"my calendar is very full…."

     She will think that she is in charge, but perhaps will learn that she is being used in a very foul game.   That game, ultimately, defines victory as the total destruction of English Common Law and the form of republican democracy that brought the United States of America to the very far edge of prosperity, human advancement, and legal process by tradition and common agreement.

    The objective?  The establishment of a Socialist Democratic State, some thing like the Nationale Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei…the parties that solved all the problems last time, like Stalin, Robespierre, Che, Mao, Ho, Hillary, Peron, Fidel, the Ortegas, Chavez / Maduro, etc. etc. etc. 

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    We remember so clearly how the cast of the Broadway Play "Hamilton" stopped in order to insult the Vice-President elect of the United States of America. Whitetrash, presumptuous snips…classless, ignorant, self-impressed.   Hubris without merit…Arrogance without qualification.

     From whence cometh all nature of putrefaction of Truth and Natural Law?
It comes from social engineers who know better than the common man.  Save me from being saved by reformers.

El Gringo Viejo

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Deeper and Wider and More - repost from 21 July 2010

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    This has been a real time of it.   The area of northeastern Mexico comprised of the States of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and Coahuila which received the brunt of Hurricane Alex (reference previous blog entry) have since received another dose.   This came in the form of  "almost Hurricane Bonnie", a tropical depression that came ashore on the central Gulf coast of Tamaulipas.    This system actually crossed directly over our little Quinta on the banks of the Rio Corona.   We had 16.5 inches of rain in two days.   The mountains to the west had much, much more.    There were reasonable reports of up to 45 inches over a three day period.     This is to be added to what we had received before.

     Our little sedate mountain stream....the Rio Corona....rose up to within about 20 feet of our adobe house, our second threat inside of the month (the Rio ran at 23 feet above normal flow).   The neighbour's old mequite tree that shades our southeast corner was blown down....there was much damage to the Montezuma Cypress trees which line the Rio Corona...but not fatal.    This meant that the winds were much stronger that those which were supposed to have accompanied the 35 mph estimates.   Everyone scoffed at such official velocities.

      Much of the energy of this second system continued to the northwest and dumped prodigous amounts of rain over the same area previously affected by Hurricane Alex.   The Rio Grande's drainage basin collected copious amounts of runoff.   The Rio San Juan, the Alamo, the Salado, the Sabinal, along with upriver inflows being captured by Amistad Reservoir near Del Rio, Texas all joined in the game.   Falcon Reservoir, built in 1953, rose to its highest retention in history....the Mexican rivers overflowed their dams, their banks, and everything possible.    At this moment the floodway system in the Lower Rio Grande Valley is almost at capacity and the Rio Grande is just barely beginning a fall from cresting.    More rain is on the way, however.

      The highways between the Laredos (Texas and Tamaulipas) and the Monterrey metroplex were inundated....there was much damage.   Laredo is the busiest land port between two countries in the world.   The back up was all but incomprehensible.   Tractor-trailer rigs were backed up two-abreast for forty miles on the Mexican side and 35 miles on the American.   Train convoys were in a similar position.  Everyone was tied up from 4 to 6 days.

       I shall report a bit more on this.   We in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas are in precarity at this time, although the water is no longer rising.   The possible arrival of new systems can change this at any time.    In the previous blog I wrote that the governor of Nuevo Leon had estimated damages to be as high as a billion dollars....this is almost a macabre joke at this point.   All the damage, throughout the affected three State area....is surely more in the neighbourhood of 50 billion dollars, if not more....and much of this damage is upon construction and installation of a generally good to excellent quality.   It is a pity.....but perhaps greater things will be built with and upon the ruins.    For sure this area is going to see a severe labour shortage for the coming three years.

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     This is a repost from over eight years ago, concerning a relatively tame hurricane that came over our little adobe hut in the middle of NoWhere, Mexico.   A veritable Blast from the Past.

El Gringo Viejo

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