 |
| We simply ran out of ideas for the discriminating woman who needed that "basic black patent heel" but who also was concerned that the rumour about "Obamagators" would begin going door-to-door to sing their popular anthems of the season (Look for the Union Label and La Internacionale and This Land Is Our Land, This Land's Not Your Land, You Didn't Build It, Obama Will'd It). It is known that after singing for what seems hours at the front door, they will begin banging on the doors and windows all around the house, demanding that the occupants sign up for "Free Medical Care", and they also try to shake down the occupants for the "Pensions for OWS & ACORN Martyrs" fund. It is a form authorising a 19 USD bank draft each month made out to some people named Reggie Love and Omar Onyango Obama and Auntie Zietuni. We think that these shoes are the perfect fit for any such occasion. Made in America, non-union labour, with a 1,000 - use warrantee against defects in damage-producing capability. shipping and handling and shamwow blood-wiper cleaning towel included at no extra charge - 19.00 / one payment only. Checks accepted. ________________________________________________________ Merry Christ's Mass - God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen...and Ladies. El Gringo Viejo y familia y El Zorro del Norte y familia les desea un fuertamente Feliz Navidad y un verderamente prospero An~o Nuevo! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
Tuesday, 24 December 2013
Late Christmas Gifting Solutions
Monday, 23 December 2013
Chistmas in those days...
On the Border, deep into the southernmost part of Texas, life was generally pleasantly boring. Weather and social events of a predictable nature seemed to be the important things that were at the centre of activity and conversation. These seemed normal, for although the area was semi-arid in large part, irrigation provided the backstop for an agricultural industry that was as advanced as any in the world.
So, King Cotton and its diseases, advancements, marketing, ginning, and transport was terribly important. Each calendar year meant that some grower in the Lower Rio Grande Valley would deliver the trailer-full of lint staple that would be the "This Year's First Bale of Cotton in America". At times my father would grow cotton, planting in January or early February and awaiting the squares, then bolls, and then the popping out of the bright white, tightly packed strands of fibre. Bugs, too much rain, not enough rain, salty Rio Grande water when the flow was low, salty but clear well water when the Rio Grande had too little water to pump up into the intricate system of canals, falling prices for the "white gold" , lack of labour to do the hand-picked harvest and the hand hoed, plant by plant nurturing....enough to make any man's or woman's head truly spin.
There was nothing more ridiculous, I think, that casting one's future into the hands of such a fate as what one encounters in farming. Then there were few, if any subsidies. Some people played the Soil Bank game, being paid money from the Central Government for not growing crops....the Bentsen Enterprise people did well at that kind of farming.
Later there were declarations for drought relief and then other programs for flood relief, and then programs for falling commodity price relief, and other silly, counterproductive government meddling. But, up until the mid-1950s, farming was pretty much a daily game of high-card draw. If the Devil drew a higher card than the farmer, the Devil won.
We are in 1952, following two very hard freezes....1949 and 1951....that had frozen in the Turning Basin of the Shrimper Fleet (340 shrimp trawlers) down at Port Isabel on the coast. The combination left-hook, right-cross had pretty much destroyed 9o per cent of the producing tree-stock in the Valley's citrus belt. My parent's business in the grove care field changed from being a lucrative, if exhausting, adventure in the caring for hundreds of acres owned by absentee investors...to essentially a stump removal service.
 |
| .Above - A group of Tarascans from Guanajusto. These men were all from the village of Yurrira. Guanajuato,and had been involved in or relatives of the "Cristeros" fighters who defended the right of Roman Catholics t0 worship and maintain theirreligious practices in Mexico. It was a general uprising throughout the Nation commanded, symbolically from Guanajuato,the Centre of Mexico. The men were excellent workers, punctual, clean, honest, and expert in matters of irrigation and pest and plague control. Centre - A group of men from Nuevo Leon State emptying their long-sacks...each containing about 90 - 100 pounds of freshly picked bolls. Lower - One of our men who tended the 3 draught horses and 4 Guernsey milk cows. The trees are on our home acreage just north of McAllen. They are Valencia Orange about 5 years old. So, they would be placed right around my birth, Spring of 1947, as are the upper two photographs. |
That was the backdrop of our Christmas during the Christmastide that connected 1952 with 1953. Everything was a disaster. So everything was normal. Eisenhower had won the Presidency, meaning Texas and Lousiana would retain their tidal mineral rights some distance off-shore, and that peace would be in the offing over in Korea. My father had made a good harvest of cotton, in spite of the on-going drought. And he had made a good crop and price on tomatoes. My mother had been sought out and asked to take a new job as an outfacing company representative for the "big" region wide Central Power and Light Company, a subsidiary of Central and Southwest Power. It would be a cheesy, high-paying position with a company auto and everything. She would start in May, 1953. And, of course, my mother's father was not speaking to her because she and my father had voted Republican in the presidentials. After all they had done to us during the Reconstruction, don't you know?
But, although those pictures on the left seem almost tropical, it is Christmas. Dull, 84 degrees, no television, only radio, black and white movies that we go to see four or five times a year, at most. That was a bit strange, because we lived less than 300 yards and across the paved road from a drive-in movie, where my oldest brother worked as an usher and cashier. He also worked down on the Main Street right in the Middle of McAllen, Texas at the Palace Theatre, a real top drawer place where my brother wore a uniform like a prince of a royal house of Europe might wear....and they gave him a special flashlight, too.
This was a talented brother. He played football and played tuba in the band, during the same games! He was also a real master in the decoration of a Christmas Tree. When people saw our tree, they actually offered to pay my brother Milton to come to their house the next year to "do us one the same.'' My mother was very much a Tennessee Anglo traditionalist, so we would have a selected log for Christmas Eve from our prunings of the past year (plenty then, due to the freezes), and a mantle full of long, boot-socks for the three boys and displays of religious, nativity related images, candles, and various cards from friends and family, far and near. A few close friends would be there every night from the last week of advent until the Epiphany. The socks stayed up until the 6th of January, and really good friends would drop by and put small goodies into each of the appropriate socks. Everything smelled pretty smoky by that time.
Although all were good friends, my favourite was Mac Hobson, deputy postmistress for the McAllen district. She was also a neighbour, living behind the Palms Drive Inn Movie Theatre. So, while the number of times my parents might have driven over to have a night at the movies were few, we did avail ourselves sometimes of eating Mac's popcorn and watching movies from her stoop, hearing everything on a slight delay from the 200 or so car-speakers, 200 yards away, and just across the gravel road.
Our house had all the appropriate Saints, peering accusingly from the walls from their pr0fessionally framed and mounted places. It being Christmas, the nicer china became de rigueur. A nice sterling service was also shined-up along with crystal, even for breakfast and no-visitor situations. Nuts of all kinds, and smallish yellow apples, spicy fragrances, all such things were part of the mix.
The décor was early farmstead, mixed with family heirlooms of the finest quality New England furniture traditions....a high-boy, low-boy and bed, all matching, brought from New York to Minneapolis, supposedly having been made in during the last quarter of the 1700s. There were a lot of "family pieces", along with the knick - knackery that American families collect over a few hundred years on a new Continent. We had closets, and storge attics, and attics of junk and stuff....if only any of it could have spoken of what it had presenced....goodness gracious.
My father said that his father had told him that his father had told him that all the really fine stuff from England that the first of our surnamed forbearers had brought had pretty much been dispersed by Luther, the father of my father's father. It had been dispersed to earlier uncles and cousins, as the family had moved from Massachusetts and Maine, then on to New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and finally northeastern Pennsylvania.
Our back room was the brick part of the house, and also was where the fireplace was placed. It was the "family room" where we would eat and listen to the radio, and play table games. Folks would come without announcement or invitation all during the last week of Advent, right after we had the tree up. They would gather for eggnog and warmth (it there were any rare chill) by the fireplace, the room would fill with pipe and cigarette smoke. All the way through until the Epiphany, friends would slide a little something into the three boot sock, neatly labelled with the name of each brother, things like a really nice, keep-forever Old Timer pocket knife, an older brother scored a nice, tough and useful Timex watch.
One of my biggest childhood faux pas, of many, was hovering around our fairy Godmother, Mac Hobson. She was one of those women who was always smiling. She was also the deputy postmistress of the McAllen Post Office and the McAllen collection centre (the largest south of San Antonio). She was a single woman who also raised and nursed sick and emotionally troubled and/or abused horses. At one time she kept the stand-in horse that was used as a substitute for Roy Rogers's Trigger when he needed spelling or was tuckered. Trigger's sub had "psychological issues" and Mac would agree to take such animals for boarding, care, and counselling. She might have been the original "horse whisperer". She had a way with the four legged beasts, and her personal mount, Danny was also a patient horse who seemed to sense the ills another horse was suffering. He got along with everyone, man or beast.
Our mother allowed that she was highly educated at some Ivy League university, had lost her brother to a disease, and her father to a heart attack. Although she had a number of men who expressed interest in her...for long-term arrangements like marriage, she seemed to be content as she was...perhaps to avoid further abandonment by men to whom she felt close. She made up one of eight or nine single women in the county who were well-set to well-to-do, attractive, and settled in their way. Mac seemed to like boys like my brothers and me, and horses. There was never anything ever untoward in her association with us, so this is not some kind of a "tell-all" post.
My indiscretion at the age of five was to have sidled over while she was playing chess with my oldest brother, with about 15 family and friends in a well furnished but pretty tightly-fit after supper crowd in the fireplace room. Then, during a lull in the game, I blurted out the totally prohibited taboo of all taboos...."Aunt Mac, How old are you?"
The room filled with the overwhelming noise of total, absolute, deafening silence. The-world-just-ended silence. In those years it was different, even for an indulged and spoilt child. My mother made it over in three strides, and grabbed me up by the first arm she could pull loose from my shoulder. After she had beat the blood out of that arm all over my head, she started in with the hammer....
Okay...okay...maybe it wasn't quite that bad, and Mac did intervene. "Nola, Nola goodness, you have three boys, you should know that they are almost human by now. There's no meanness in this little King" She played on the fact that the Mexicans who worked with my Father always called me Rey David (King David), "Let me tell him about what he did wrong." And she screwed my arm back on and made the hammer disappear. Then she picked me up and we went to the fireplace where she whispered, "I'm three times older than your brother Norman and less than twice as old as your brother Milton. Now, Saturday you have to tell me how old I am. Okay?" Of course, being lugged around by the Faery Godmother and whispered secrets and having my arm screwed back on all on one night was bribe enough.
"You're the luckiest child the Yankees left behind, pumpkin-head," my mother informed me as Mac and I warmed at the fireplace. Never again did I ever ask any female of any kind how many moons had graced her presence on this Earth. Being a bit precocious, El Gringo Viejo did figure out the age by the next Saturday, as was rewarded with an "all-by-myself-ride" back to Mac's house on Danny, while she rode one of her "patients" a good ways back.
Perhaps we can fill in other parts of my childhood on the farm during this Christmastide. These are the days for remembering.
El Gringo Viejo
But, although those pictures on the left seem almost tropical, it is Christmas. Dull, 84 degrees, no television, only radio, black and white movies that we go to see four or five times a year, at most. That was a bit strange, because we lived less than 300 yards and across the paved road from a drive-in movie, where my oldest brother worked as an usher and cashier. He also worked down on the Main Street right in the Middle of McAllen, Texas at the Palace Theatre, a real top drawer place where my brother wore a uniform like a prince of a royal house of Europe might wear....and they gave him a special flashlight, too.
This was a talented brother. He played football and played tuba in the band, during the same games! He was also a real master in the decoration of a Christmas Tree. When people saw our tree, they actually offered to pay my brother Milton to come to their house the next year to "do us one the same.'' My mother was very much a Tennessee Anglo traditionalist, so we would have a selected log for Christmas Eve from our prunings of the past year (plenty then, due to the freezes), and a mantle full of long, boot-socks for the three boys and displays of religious, nativity related images, candles, and various cards from friends and family, far and near. A few close friends would be there every night from the last week of advent until the Epiphany. The socks stayed up until the 6th of January, and really good friends would drop by and put small goodies into each of the appropriate socks. Everything smelled pretty smoky by that time.
Although all were good friends, my favourite was Mac Hobson, deputy postmistress for the McAllen district. She was also a neighbour, living behind the Palms Drive Inn Movie Theatre. So, while the number of times my parents might have driven over to have a night at the movies were few, we did avail ourselves sometimes of eating Mac's popcorn and watching movies from her stoop, hearing everything on a slight delay from the 200 or so car-speakers, 200 yards away, and just across the gravel road.
Our house had all the appropriate Saints, peering accusingly from the walls from their pr0fessionally framed and mounted places. It being Christmas, the nicer china became de rigueur. A nice sterling service was also shined-up along with crystal, even for breakfast and no-visitor situations. Nuts of all kinds, and smallish yellow apples, spicy fragrances, all such things were part of the mix.
The décor was early farmstead, mixed with family heirlooms of the finest quality New England furniture traditions....a high-boy, low-boy and bed, all matching, brought from New York to Minneapolis, supposedly having been made in during the last quarter of the 1700s. There were a lot of "family pieces", along with the knick - knackery that American families collect over a few hundred years on a new Continent. We had closets, and storge attics, and attics of junk and stuff....if only any of it could have spoken of what it had presenced....goodness gracious.
My father said that his father had told him that his father had told him that all the really fine stuff from England that the first of our surnamed forbearers had brought had pretty much been dispersed by Luther, the father of my father's father. It had been dispersed to earlier uncles and cousins, as the family had moved from Massachusetts and Maine, then on to New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and finally northeastern Pennsylvania.
Our back room was the brick part of the house, and also was where the fireplace was placed. It was the "family room" where we would eat and listen to the radio, and play table games. Folks would come without announcement or invitation all during the last week of Advent, right after we had the tree up. They would gather for eggnog and warmth (it there were any rare chill) by the fireplace, the room would fill with pipe and cigarette smoke. All the way through until the Epiphany, friends would slide a little something into the three boot sock, neatly labelled with the name of each brother, things like a really nice, keep-forever Old Timer pocket knife, an older brother scored a nice, tough and useful Timex watch.
 |
| Miss Mac Hobson and right is Danny, the world's nicest gentleman horse in history. Atop Danny is El Gringo Viejo when he was still a somewhat human bean. In the background is a third portion of the front porch of our McAllen farm house. c. - 1951 |
Our mother allowed that she was highly educated at some Ivy League university, had lost her brother to a disease, and her father to a heart attack. Although she had a number of men who expressed interest in her...for long-term arrangements like marriage, she seemed to be content as she was...perhaps to avoid further abandonment by men to whom she felt close. She made up one of eight or nine single women in the county who were well-set to well-to-do, attractive, and settled in their way. Mac seemed to like boys like my brothers and me, and horses. There was never anything ever untoward in her association with us, so this is not some kind of a "tell-all" post.
My indiscretion at the age of five was to have sidled over while she was playing chess with my oldest brother, with about 15 family and friends in a well furnished but pretty tightly-fit after supper crowd in the fireplace room. Then, during a lull in the game, I blurted out the totally prohibited taboo of all taboos...."Aunt Mac, How old are you?"
The room filled with the overwhelming noise of total, absolute, deafening silence. The-world-just-ended silence. In those years it was different, even for an indulged and spoilt child. My mother made it over in three strides, and grabbed me up by the first arm she could pull loose from my shoulder. After she had beat the blood out of that arm all over my head, she started in with the hammer....
Okay...okay...maybe it wasn't quite that bad, and Mac did intervene. "Nola, Nola goodness, you have three boys, you should know that they are almost human by now. There's no meanness in this little King" She played on the fact that the Mexicans who worked with my Father always called me Rey David (King David), "Let me tell him about what he did wrong." And she screwed my arm back on and made the hammer disappear. Then she picked me up and we went to the fireplace where she whispered, "I'm three times older than your brother Norman and less than twice as old as your brother Milton. Now, Saturday you have to tell me how old I am. Okay?" Of course, being lugged around by the Faery Godmother and whispered secrets and having my arm screwed back on all on one night was bribe enough.
"You're the luckiest child the Yankees left behind, pumpkin-head," my mother informed me as Mac and I warmed at the fireplace. Never again did I ever ask any female of any kind how many moons had graced her presence on this Earth. Being a bit precocious, El Gringo Viejo did figure out the age by the next Saturday, as was rewarded with an "all-by-myself-ride" back to Mac's house on Danny, while she rode one of her "patients" a good ways back.
Perhaps we can fill in other parts of my childhood on the farm during this Christmastide. These are the days for remembering.
El Gringo Viejo
Saturday, 21 December 2013
Friday, 20 December 2013
Oooops! That Billy Goat knocked down the Million Kilowatt Dam
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It has been about 200 years or so (1989) since this writer informed a highly placed Republican operative that there was a loud-mouthed political commentator who was saying things that many thought had been banned on radio or television. Further, he was saying such things on a live, three-hour nationally syndicated radio programme. The highly placed political operative expressed some interest in this new conservative commentator. I advised him that the fellow looked like a twin of my Uncle Billy, foolishly thinking that such information might further whet his interest in the issue.
El Gringo Viejo and his boss, along with five other small businesses, gathered up 1,500 USD each, and paid local talk-radio station to engage the "Rush to Excellence Show" to come down in person to entertain the rubes in fly-over country. Our area was then, and remains, the last area in Texas with the contamination of having a welfare-based, elected Democrat Corruption Factory totally in place.
El Gringo Viejo was busy being a successful entrepreneur in those days, with several small businesses balanced on a razor blade. Of course, he had his wife to do the unimportant stuff, like most of the work and raising the children.
The show, called "Rush to Excellence" came to town, filled the largest venue in town with well over 1,000 people...all paid, and was a great success. The tickets my wife and I bought for the important Republican personage, who truly was a highly placed Republican activist, went for naught, because he did not appear. My mother and my wife went to the private reception with the private tickets since we have been among the five sponsors. Since the important Republican personage chose not to attend, I decided to say to hell with it and remained at the helm of the businesses for the day and night.
The show, called "Rush to Excellence" came to town, filled the largest venue in town with well over 1,000 people...all paid, and was a great success. The tickets my wife and I bought for the important Republican personage, who truly was a highly placed Republican activist, went for naught, because he did not appear. My mother and my wife went to the private reception with the private tickets since we have been among the five sponsors. Since the important Republican personage chose not to attend, I decided to say to hell with it and remained at the helm of the businesses for the day and night.
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| John G. Tower Senator for Texas |
This same operative also declared in 1980, during the Republican primaries, that the nomination of Ronald Reagan would result in a re-run of the Goldwater / Johnson election of 1964....and, in a way, perhaps he was right. Sociologically, the Republican Primaries of 1976 and 1980 did more to finally establish a viable Republican Party in Texas since Reconstruction than any other impulse or influence. Reagan won both primaries overwhelmingly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Another answer to, "What does this mean? What are you trying to say?" is the following:
 |
| Official AmeriBolshie Flag |
Great Ruler of the Cosmos, please close Washington, District of Columbia down and turn it into an outdoor museum of monuments and parks. Give each man and woman who compose the entire adult Washington, D.C, population 100,000 (USD or equivalent in lottery tickets). This includes Miss Flukie, and the entire Congress, the bureaucracy both local and extended, and city administration. They shall each be given family plan tickets for a plane, AMTRAK, or bus ticket to another Continent, or Detroit, New Orleans, or Chicago. There, each might feel at home in a place where he/she can recover from his/her illness, injury, disability, or particular psychological damage from being hurt by meanie-poo words, comfortably reposed back into a friendly natural environment.
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The following entry is drawn from the "making the rounds" electronic mail that is sent every so often by the Texas Nationalist Movement. The word continues to circulate. It is no longer the 7 beers and 2 margaritas fuelling the fantasy. Sometimes it doesn't even require one beer to draw reasonable "what if's" and "We can't keep on like they are doing in Washington."
A particular Tea-Party United States Representative recently recanted his condemnation of the movement by coming back to the same group he condemned as traitors to the United States to ask for their support in the up-coming re-election campaign.
We are not traitors. So long as the Republic of Texas remains within the self-imposed condition of allowing itself to be within the union of the several sovereign States composing the United States of America, we agree to abide by those laws and regulations that seem pertinent to us. Various of the other laws and regulations are being contested formally within both the court system of the Republic of Texas as well as the United States of America. In several cases, recently, the Cause of the Republic of Texas has found relief and redress in significant cases related to central government injury to the people of the Republic of Texas.
So without further ado, and referencing that Billy Goats really do knock down million kilowatt dams we submit:
With high schools around the nation preparing to hold graduation ceremonies soon, the state of Texas has laid claim to a class honorific: "Most Likely to Secede."
Radio host Dennis Miller and columnist Mark Steyn gave a light-hearted nod to the idea of a breakup of the United States during a discussion on Miller's radio show Thursday, with Steyn acknowledging that the independence movement in Texas is no joke.
The two were discussing what might happen if the tide of socialism washing over the United States remains the prevailing political driving force in Washington, and Miller said getting away from socialism wouldn't necessarily involve moving to Australia. He suggested instead moving to Texas, which would be "the first place to push back against it."
"If I ever do flee, don't think fleeing has to involve you going over to Alice Springs or something," Miller said. "I'm going to Texas because that'll be the first place that pushes back. They're not going down the tubes with this country if this country decides to go down the tubes. I really think I'd head for Texas."
Steyn, a columnist for the conservative National Review, said that Texas could well turn out to be the leader of a Soviet Union-style breakup because the independence movement there is a "serious" one.
"I think you're right there," Steyn said. "The idea that all 50 states are going to be content to slide off the cliff in a kind of haze and a drone of sort of soporific princess fluffy-bunny socialism is completely false. I mean, there will be — you're going to have serious secession movements if some of this stuff isn't turned around, not just in Texas."
The Texas Nationalist Movement is the primary independence organization in the state and membership in the organization has exploded in recent months. County-level TNM groups are now active in more than 100 of the state's 254 counties, and leaders of the TNM are expecting even more new members once a series of broadcast and print media ads begin reaching the public. The TNM has already indicated they will again be fielding candidates for local, county and state offices in the coming election cycle.
The subject of secession often reminds many Americans of the Civil War, and many progressives who otherwise spend much of their time denigrating the armed forces threaten that a move toward independence by Texas or other states would prompt another civil war. The Texas Nationalists pointedly embrace the belief that their movement is wholly political and that independence can be accomplished at the ballot box, not on the battlefield.
Perhaps with that in mind, the comedian Miller offered a suggestion.
"It would appear at times when civil war might be inevitable," Miller replied. "Why don't we get together right now and agree to do it by paintball so nobody gets hurt. Why don't we just have a big liberal-conservative — meet at the Mississippi and have a big paintball game so we can get this figured out?"
Story at the Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/16/steyn-warns-of-serious-secession-movements-video/
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This is not a fair warning for what is to come. The is an observation of that which has already arrived.
El Gringo Viejo
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Thursday, 19 December 2013
REPOST; GOLDIE OLDIE FILES - Woodrow Wilson, Carranza and other Obamaoid Progressives from History
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, the third in the installment about Thomas Woodrow Wilson, a bigoted, hyper-utopian progressive who helped get rid of a dictator, and thereby condemned an entire nation to socialist-progressive-utopianism for almost 80 years. Agrarian reform programs brought Mexico from the list of food exporting nations...number seven in the world in 1910...to a country that had to import corn...the Mexican dietary staple...and pay for it in silver, gold, and oil. Burgeoning industry went all but silent, for forty years, while machinery was back-patched, repaired with reforged parts, and general Rip Van Winkle-ism prevailed until the 1960s.
By that time, Mexico was truly a nation with a 20th Century understanding of reality, but an 18th Century level of development. It was not the poorest of third world countries by any means, but it was in the middle of the pack. The Nation demonstrated the ability to do impossible tasks, such as the Cuernavaca - Mexico City Autobahn, the development of Acapulco as a premier vacation spot in the international scheme of things, the Copper Canyon Rail transit of the Sierra Madre Occidental, the building of the 42 story Torre LatinoAmericano in downtown Mexico City. These and many other jewels were apparent to anyone who was willing to look, but it was rather much like a V-8 engine always seemingly hitting on 5 cylinders. Corruption, sloth, "rounded corners and sharp curves", and a typical, national-socialist, monolithic political structure kept Mexico "under control". In other words, they had painted themselves into the same corner that had provoked the Revolution of 1910 - 1917.
 |
This is Miquel Aleman Valdez,
who was the first post
Revolutionary President
of Mexico who had not been
a veteran and General Officer
in that War. He served in
office from 1946 - 1952.
Although he entered politics
as bit of a liberal,he became
known as the first
"conservative" to hold the
office in the opinion of many
political scientists. The first
non-military veteran to be
president after the
revolution. It is said that
he looked a lot like his friend
Walt Disney. And he did a
lot of big projects, like
Acapulco.
|
But, by this point the problem was greater than that some old man who had perpetuated himself in office, and then insulated himself to the point that intellectual wags could say, "Presidente Diaz has turned the Presidential Palace into a mausoleum for living Presidentes." The political party that evolved from the mess of the late nineteen-teens through the 1920s was finally, and ridiculously named the Party of the Institutional Revolution. It was a name that only a Bolshie could love.
Mexico found itself in this foggy situation of anti-Americanism intertwined with a certain mixture of respect, affection, and suspicion directed toward the Gringos....as well as a further pleasant bondage of import/export of meats, fruits, vegetables, grains, seafood and shellfish, industrial raw and finished materials, tourism, and so forth...trade going both ways, with heavy protection by the Mexican government imposing sometimes draconian duties in order to defend Mexican heavy and medium industry. American belt autos for instance, required 300 per cent duty, and more if they had electric windows.
What brought all this on? It was the intransigence of the Mexican elites and intellectual leftists who were bound and determined to imposed Utopia. They had been selected by Wilson, Lind, Lane, House, and other social engineers and community organisers to bring Mexico quickly to a happy land full of cheerful middle class people, taking piano lessons and buying motorcars. They believed in happiness through nationalism, not patriotism. They believed that gratification should take the form of having things. Being very happy meant taking things from people who had "too much".
The social engineers and politicians were grateful that the Democrat politicians and the liberals from the United States were "reasonable' about making sure that the intellectuals and social engineers should certainly be well-compensated, and kept apart from any of the normal restraints imposed by social democracy. That is why we have Frida and her mommy and daddy. This is why we are still just emerging from the 200 million ton gorilla called the Confederacion de Trabajadores Mexicanos, and the Sindicato Nacional de Petroleros a; Serviceio de la Republica Mexicana.
The former is the Confederation of Mexican Workers and formed, litrally one third of the Ruling Structure of the Ruling Party, the aforenamed Partido Revolucionario Institucional. It was part of the Ruling Party and everyone in Mexico, by the Constitution of 1917 had to be a member of the Confederacion or one of it octopus-like locals if in fact he was going to work in the skilled trades or service sector of the Economy, public or private. This was the ideal model thought up by....George Bernard Shaw and the Fabians....and also the Bolshies in a place called Moscow....and also, right around the same time another dumboe by the name of Venustiano Carranza. Obregon believed as did Carranza in the need for a socialist democratic construct to the society. Both were killed, Carranza after his followers tired of his high-handedness and corruption before he had been in office for two years, and Obregon when he determined to see through his "democratic reforms" by running for a second term which was a violation of one of the main battle cries of the Revolucion immediately past. "No Re-eleccion!!!"
The social engineers and politicians were grateful that the Democrat politicians and the liberals from the United States were "reasonable' about making sure that the intellectuals and social engineers should certainly be well-compensated, and kept apart from any of the normal restraints imposed by social democracy. That is why we have Frida and her mommy and daddy. This is why we are still just emerging from the 200 million ton gorilla called the Confederacion de Trabajadores Mexicanos, and the Sindicato Nacional de Petroleros a; Serviceio de la Republica Mexicana.
The former is the Confederation of Mexican Workers and formed, litrally one third of the Ruling Structure of the Ruling Party, the aforenamed Partido Revolucionario Institucional. It was part of the Ruling Party and everyone in Mexico, by the Constitution of 1917 had to be a member of the Confederacion or one of it octopus-like locals if in fact he was going to work in the skilled trades or service sector of the Economy, public or private. This was the ideal model thought up by....George Bernard Shaw and the Fabians....and also the Bolshies in a place called Moscow....and also, right around the same time another dumboe by the name of Venustiano Carranza. Obregon believed as did Carranza in the need for a socialist democratic construct to the society. Both were killed, Carranza after his followers tired of his high-handedness and corruption before he had been in office for two years, and Obregon when he determined to see through his "democratic reforms" by running for a second term which was a violation of one of the main battle cries of the Revolucion immediately past. "No Re-eleccion!!!"
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| Juan de Leon Toral assassin of Pres. Gen. Cd, Alvaro Obregon Salido about five years before he assassinated Alvaro Obrgon, President-elect of Mexico |
Carranza was assassinated because he was an obstreperous ass. But Obregon was different. The leftists moaned about losing him, because he was Big Left, exposed to all the wonders of the social democratic model in Europe well-received by Progressives from the United States. But he was killed by a "religious fanatic". That religious fanatic bore two beefs with Obregon. He was angry because Obregon had committed to the idea that the Catholic Church had to be either eliminated or remanded to essentially parlour practice. The Constitution had already provided for the legal basis for the expropriation of all the Church's property and even their churches and secondary building like rectories, convents, and monasteries. Certain elements the Army had been busy enforcing the most abusive parts of the Carranzista document, by harassing clerics, nuns, and tertiaries, along with parishioners and people who wore religious jewellery. Many clerics and common believers were tortured and murdered by these pseudo-military units. By the time Obregon decided that Mexico needed more Obregon and fewer priests, his assassin had already decided to solve that problem.
That was the second reason for having to murder Obregon. He was displacing his "political godson" President Plutarco Elias Calles an even more horrid anti-Catholic and anti-religionist in general. and had just been re-elected two weeks before, to a leap-frog term split by Plutarco Elias Calles. He was enjoying a banquet in the plush San Angel district of Mexico City, when young Juan de Leon Toral, showed Obregon a caricature, as though he were the restaurant's "official" caricaturista. and received Obregon's pleasant approval of the work....turned away, turned again, and put five bullets into Obregon's back.
That was the second reason for having to murder Obregon. He was displacing his "political godson" President Plutarco Elias Calles an even more horrid anti-Catholic and anti-religionist in general. and had just been re-elected two weeks before, to a leap-frog term split by Plutarco Elias Calles. He was enjoying a banquet in the plush San Angel district of Mexico City, when young Juan de Leon Toral, showed Obregon a caricature, as though he were the restaurant's "official" caricaturista. and received Obregon's pleasant approval of the work....turned away, turned again, and put five bullets into Obregon's back.
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| Plutarco Elias Calles President of Mexico 1924 - 1928 Force behind the throne from 1929 - 1935 (more or less) |
This resulted in a really weird ascension, little understood by anyone without a serious brain syndrome, but Obregon was elected, but not inaugurated. He had violated one of the principal tenets of the Revolucion de 1910 -1 917. NO RE-ELECCION!!
His predecessor could not serve as president because he had already served his full term. The Constitutional provision required that the Secretary of the Interior had to be installed for a period of two years, while new candidates and elections could be put in place. The Interior Secretariat was a fusion of what Americans would think of the Secretary of Internal Domestic Affairs and Governance, the State Department, and the Executive Office of the President. So it fell to Emilio Portes Gil to serve as President of Mexico from 1928 until 1930. Portes Gil was advised of this incident while at the Hacienda de Santa Engracia which is located just a few hundred yards from our little adobe hideaway. He was playing cards with Jose Martinez Gomez, then the very young inheritor and owner of the Hacienda, and three other gentlemen farmers of the citrus area surrounding the Hacienda. Portes Gil, it is said, rode by mount to the train station about 4 miles away, with a valet, and took the train to Monterrey, then the overnight to Mexico City, and reported for duty at the Presidential Palace that the OROGs have seen in pictures of the Zocalo in Mexico City.
His predecessor could not serve as president because he had already served his full term. The Constitutional provision required that the Secretary of the Interior had to be installed for a period of two years, while new candidates and elections could be put in place. The Interior Secretariat was a fusion of what Americans would think of the Secretary of Internal Domestic Affairs and Governance, the State Department, and the Executive Office of the President. So it fell to Emilio Portes Gil to serve as President of Mexico from 1928 until 1930. Portes Gil was advised of this incident while at the Hacienda de Santa Engracia which is located just a few hundred yards from our little adobe hideaway. He was playing cards with Jose Martinez Gomez, then the very young inheritor and owner of the Hacienda, and three other gentlemen farmers of the citrus area surrounding the Hacienda. Portes Gil, it is said, rode by mount to the train station about 4 miles away, with a valet, and took the train to Monterrey, then the overnight to Mexico City, and reported for duty at the Presidential Palace that the OROGs have seen in pictures of the Zocalo in Mexico City.
Plutarco Elisa Calles then ran the government of Mexico from behind the scenes by essentially controlling three almost equally powerful political figures, each of whom served a Congressionally approved two year term.
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As we reviewed this it was moving to realise the truth behind the saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In tearing down a construct of authoritarian institutions, the Progressives in Mexico, egged on by their half-brothers in the United States and Europe, set about to expropriate the Haciendas, and replace them with....essentially nothing.
There was a certain perverse joy in savouring the moments of watching rich people have to carry their suitcases and boxes and whatever they could salvage down a dirt road and board a train in the second class because some pseudo soldier in a lieutenant's uniform, glass-eyed drunk on mescal has taken your last peso, and your wife's and daughter's jewellery, and all because of the fact that you were born. Born to privilege, true, but it was not your call. It was where the stork stopped. No real determination about being a good rich guy or a bad rich guy....just loathed, as did the citizens of the Nouveau Republique Francaise loathe their betters and titled people, until they killed Robespierre and waited to be saved by an imitation Emperor in the form of another madman.
(One remembers Obama telling the crowd, "Get your revenge! ")
But it is true. There was lots of fluff and ruffle, many great speeches. Plans for this and plans for that. There was blame to go around, always it was the Gringos' fault because of this measure or that law....but the richest country on Planet Earth in terms of known geological and other natural stores of wealth per capita was Mexico, and yet, nothing seemed to happen. The Haciendas were frequently expropriated but not repartitioned among the peons. And if the repartition did take place, the peon received a warrant title for so many years...usually until he would be calculated to be too old to farm effectively, and the Reforma Agraria would take back his property and give it to somebody else. No patrimony, no estate, no inheritance; just a rent-a-life. Schools remained a big towns, cities, and Mexico City affair, because all of the three-grade Catholic primaries had been closed, burned out, and the teachers killed, abused, exiled, terrorised, or told to desist breaking the law or ".....come with me to the license plate factory".
This is truly the Progressive way. As with Obama's Socialised Medicine Initiative (OSMI), it really is necessary to hire 20, 000 or 30,000 more IRS agents, specifically for the purpose of terrorising the populace.
It is like Hillary saying, in 1993, that certain specialty doctors make too much money, so we will solve that problem by prohibiting medical schools from graduating doctors in those specialties. That is the way socialists think. Like when the price of milk was too high during the Depression, Harold Ickes (yes, the father of the son) ordered, without authority the round up of purebred Holstein dairy cattle to be slaughtered and burned. Later when the price of milk was too low, they rounded up calves and slaughtered them, and poured milk out into the gutters around the bottling companies. This is the way of governments in an increasingly totalitarian state.
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| Venustiano Carranza del la Garza President of Mexico 1918 - 1920 |
You, the OROG, piecing together these three penetrations into the period from when Wilson ordered the total destruction of the Port and City of Vera Cruz, simply to disarm a strongman General President named Victoriano Huerta, and then stab friends of the Gringos in the back and engendered resentment that still has not really completely subsided. Those friends were Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.
Then, by essentially appointing the most anti-American, pro-German, pro-marxist individual by almost hand-walking him into the Presidential Palace, the Wilson administration managed to appoint the only truly anti-American among the entire cast of tragi-comedic theatre, Presidente, General, Ciudadano Venustiano Carranza.
Then, by essentially appointing the most anti-American, pro-German, pro-marxist individual by almost hand-walking him into the Presidential Palace, the Wilson administration managed to appoint the only truly anti-American among the entire cast of tragi-comedic theatre, Presidente, General, Ciudadano Venustiano Carranza.
The Utopian Splendours dreamed up by Carranza and piddled and dibbled with by successive decades of politicians caused much of the problem we have in Mexico to this day. The permanent, always dependent, always marginalised underclass that prefers being in that situation because they know they will be the first to receive the handouts of politicians....that is one of the final huge obstacles to Mexico's finishing at a place among the mighty. The Progressives make their messes and then they take their blame list out and begin to recite. Saul Alinsky was not the first to figure out the formula.
We might well be making further additions to this posting. Several things are going on at once at this end. Thanks to everyone who has endured this assault upon the Utopian Elitists.
El Gringo Viejo
We might well be making further additions to this posting. Several things are going on at once at this end. Thanks to everyone who has endured this assault upon the Utopian Elitists.
El Gringo Viejo
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