ARTWORK



999

A Father and Son teach each other....Usually the Father learns more

The number one concern
for all adolescent males
during the Walt Disney
"Zorro" Days - Annette
Funicello

(What follows here in Georgian face is the writing of original blog text.   Other type faces are material that has been included from other sources, or derived from emails between my son and the Old Gringo.... hisseff.... as my Grampa used to say)


     My son sent me this concerning the contemporary of another adolescent femme fatale during my days at that age.   Marisol was the equivalent of Annette Funicello, who was the Queen of the Mickey Mouse club back in the late 1950s.    The thing is that this Spanish girl from the same period is a dead ringer for my granddaughters.   They are also derived from the same part of Spain, albeit from 400 years further back in time.   Their grandmother is more of the classical Malagena type, brunette, and is typical of  an area famous for stunning beauties. My daughter, thankfully, took after her mother in terms of appearance and composition.

                                     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdnmTn0RmYk
Click on the above link to see a pleasant bit of puffery and a Shirley Temple level of talent for a child of that age.

This is Marisol in 1962 at the same age
as Annette.   Marisol, although blond, was born
in Malaga, the heart of the "Moorish" part of 
Spain.  Her natural name is Josefa Flores Gonzalez

What follows here are the Old Gringo's comments to his son concerning his unearthing this relic from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

         The video of the little Spanish girl is the one with which I am familiar.   She was quite the item during the Franco period in Spain.    She was used by the Franco government to point out to the world that "all the gueros had not abandoned Spain"  with the exodus of the communists following their defeat in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.   She was incredibly talented.   Wonder what happened to her???

      For instance, about 30,000 gueros (blond and/or light-skinned) children wound up in Mexico, sent there by their communist parents in order to find refuge from the war against the Royalists and Franco supporters.  Others went to the United States, others went to Russia and France.

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      Now you know what important matters we discuss.    Actually, however the topics are somewhat important.   The "gueritos"  (little blondies, pronounced whear - EEH -tohs) were sent to Mexico because at that time the ultra-leftist, "Great Expropriator" Lazaro Cardenas was President of Mexico.   He invited the Spanish communists affected by the victories of Franco and the great majority of the Spanish people over the Soviet backed attempt to gain control of the entry into the Mediterranean Sea, to send their children to "his home" in Michoacan State.   This astoundingly interesting State is situated between Mexico City and Guadalajara.   It is a profoundly beautiful, cold highlands area which is home to the lower Tarascan Indians, who still are found in abundance throughout the State.   Many of the Gueritos settled in Morelia, Patzacuaro -Santa Clara del Cobre area, and around Uruapan.   The vast majority of those children did not return to Spain.   In a few cases, very few, their parents came to live with them in the hospitable, leftist environment of pre-World War II Mexico.

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     Then my son sent me this article (below-linked) from the New York Times.   The article deals with a phenomena presently moving around Mexico.   It concerns the activity of a very popular, leftist poet.   The article bears reading.    It has a couple of points of inaccurate leftist cant and the rest of it has a bit of pinky drip.....BUT....incredibly....El Gringo Viejo gives OROGs permission to read it under the bedcovers and with a flashlight!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/can-this-poet-save-mexico.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1

     If the OROG wishes to read the article, it must be read in its entirity.   There are several very salient observations and conclusions towards the end and very end of the article with which the Gringo Viejo agrees.    The pinky poet...a "leftist Christian"  who follows Tolstoy (?????) and Gandhi....is actually a good guy, even in the Gringo Viejo's opinion.   Another thing is this critical point.....He is one of those very, very, very few leftists who would support a conservative Presidential candidate  in the upcoming elections or any future elections.    He has had good things to say about President Calderon and he has declared that most of the Conservative economic agenda will benefit the poor and the working-class Mexican more than the old government controlled economic models.    The growth of Mexico's economy by 10-fold in the last 20 years bespeaks of the obvious superiority of private initiatives in terms of how to make a bigger taco and make it more accessible to more people.

     (There is a joke Mexican socialists and other leftists who have become disenchanted will tell on themselves after a couple of hours in the bar.   "Hey, Pepe!  Why do you have that Conservative party bumper sticker? "   to which Pepe responds, "The Socialist Party proposes more of the same.   The same means more nothing.   They want to distribute nothing equally.   The C0nservatives want to produce something and let everyone have a chance at having at least a little something".   To which Juan says, "But Pepe, what if your neighbour gets more than you?"   It is a very sardonic joke about the Mexican pathos.)

     What follows below in normal typeface is my communique with my son.  This was sent to correct the say-it-enough-and-it-becomes-true gibberish about how the students at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas were all Holy Innocents demonstrating over the manipulation of parking tickets by an old corrupt meany down at the main Police Headquarters.    It was MUCH BIGGER and had overwhelming international implications involving the Soviet Union and the Castro brothers.     Ditto....by the way....with Salvadore Allende of Chile who was actually toppled more by a fratricidal argument between Allende's cabal of Maoists and Stalinists and other marxists who were trying to either deter or speed up Allende's nationalisation of everything in Chile.   Allende was surrounded by people who either wanted to boil the frog slowly or throw the frog into the fire immediately.   The other 66 per cent of the Chilean people who did not vote for Allende in the previous presidential elections had simply tired of his meaningless rhetoric, indecision, and pushing Chile's economy into what appeared to be a bottomless well.   Below are the Old Gringo's comments to his son:

      The New York Times article mixes saliency with absurdity.   The Evangelist for Peace and Justice has developed quite a following.   This time, however the leftist message has been blunted by reality.   The Evangelist himself has recognized that Mexico is dealing with something that goes far, far beyond political organization and direction.   The Times was big enough to point that out when it showed that Calderon successfully demonstrated that Mexico was dealing with Satan, not criminals.   The "Evangelist" had been coming to that same conclusion  along his way, and he has lectured the crowds that force will be necessary before a reasonable sustainable peace can be restored to Mexico.   I am sure he remains a committed leftist, but he has developed a good case of realityosis.

     Also, please be aware that the "specific issues" surrounding the Polytechnic disorders had little to do with why they were there on the Plaza de la Tres Culturas.    It is quickly forgotten that the grouping of upper-middle class, spoiled students to protest this or that was carefully orchestrated by the September 23th  Communist League, a Castro controlled "piquete" against the Mexican political order, and was actually and totally dedicated to the complete halting of the the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.   They were trying to bring the City of Mexico to a halt, to promote riots, vandalism, and disorder.     Guerrilla snipers were filmed shooting both into the crowd and at the Army personnel deployed at the Plaza.   This is not debatable.    The total number of dead never exceeded 160 by any count.

     One thing was also certain.    After the event, the Olympics went off without any interruption from the "defenders of justice and the poor".    It was pretty much like campus demonstrations after the "Kent State Massacre".     As proof of what I am saying....(and this comes from the pro-communist Wikipedia gnomes)...try this vignette pertaining to the murder of Eugenio Garza Sada, the richest man in Latin America, founder of Ceverceria Cuauhtemoc, Grupo Alfa, Fomento Economico Mexicano, SA de CV, and several other heavy industries in the Monterrey area....

This clarifying inclusion was taken from the normally pinko Wikipedia.   Once again, however, there can be accurate reporting and archiving on the part of the pinkies, at times, occasionally.

Kidnapping attempt and death of Eugenio Garza Sada:

     During the 1970s the Mexican political situation was difficult, with several groups looking to destabilize the government, including communist guerillas who sought funding for their activities. One of those guerillas groups, Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre, planned to kidnap Garza Sada for ransom. On the morning of September 17, 1973, a small group of 23 de Septiembre guerillas ambushed Garza Sada's car at a red light in downtown Monterrey. The kidnapping attempt turned into a gunfight when Garza Sada's bodyguard intervened, and Garza Sada was killed by multiple gunshot wounds received while reaching for his own gun. Garza Sada's funeral was attended by more than 200,000 people.

       In 2006, a Mexican Secret Police document filed in the Mexican National Archives uncovered that the Mexican government was aware of the kidnapping conspiracy a year before it actually happened, yet did not prevent it for political reasons.

The reason for failure to intervene was because the leftist Luis Echeverria Alvarez, President of Mexico and a butt-kisser for pay for both the CIA and the KGB and a monstrously dedicated statist, socialist, and free-enterprise/capitalism hater, had information from international, American, and Mexican intelligence sources about this assassination plot and never transferred the information outside of Los Pinos.   He essentially became a co-conspirator in the plot to kill Mexico's premier industrialist.    Also, there were over 600,000 people who attended the funeral....not 200,000....and this was proven by blow-ups and pin-to-the-head counts.

      The irony is that Echeverria was also Secretario de Gobernacion under the Presidency of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.   As such he was the XO of the government and was the ranking civilian officer at the Plaza de la Tres Culturas during the "Dia de Infamia", and gave the orders to return fire into the crowd of students.    Later, right-wingers would say that he did that in order to provoke what all the left-wing wanted....full-scale riots in Mexico City by illiterate peons, well-to-do "students", and communists. EVERYONE IN THE NORTH OF MEXICO WAS OF THAT OPINION A YEAR AFTER THE EVENT AND SO STATED OPENLY.   WE BELIEVED WITHOUT CHALLENGE in Texas.   The communists had said that they would halt the Olympics in "solidarity with the World's rejection of American Imperialism in Viet Nam and elsewhere, and in condemnation for Mexico's collaboration with the Imperialist."    They were humiliated when the Olympics were pulled off without a hitch....

       Thanks for your patience.   This is a complicated posting.   My children are very deep thinkers and sometimes manage to pull their father out of his cave and into the light of reason.    Please forgive me for my lecturing tone.   Sometimes a person fears that he left some instruction and insight out while he allowed his wife to do all the heavy lifting in terms of raising the children.   It would be dreadful should the my children be as dull as their father, but it is also necessary that they know why the Old Fool thinks in the manner that he thinks.    They are both more mentally and intellectually quick than their father.

Thanks again.

El Gringo Viejo          

A Troubling Disclosure

     A couple of days ago the Old Gringo decided to review a couple of "Minutemen" sites.   These are the fellows who come down to the border to "protect America" from Mexican military incursions and illegal aliens.    Several of their "documentary films" of encounters with the Mexican military brought me back to where I am.    In every case, the dumbo doing the filming and narrating is either stupid or ignorant or lying through his teeth about the nature of the conversation between the valiant defenders of America and the vile and sneaky Mexican soldier.    In the case cited here, there was a light infantry platoon, perhaps 30 soldiers, and a group of 6 or 7 ''minutemen''.

      In a couple of cases, one of the Minutemen who could speak Spanish fairly well would correct the filmer/narrator, resulting in an exchange like..."No, that's not what the lieutenant said.   He just wanted to know  if we had permission from someone to be here.".....To which the filmer responds..."I don't care what he said, I only care about what I heard".

      Lamentably, because it might be the case that the Old Gringo can speak a bit of Spanish, it was very, very apparent that the fellow saying,  ".... that was not what the Lieutenant said".... was telling the truth.    The officer's manner was not even nuanced in any negative or menacing way.   The other soldiers' weapons all around were pointed down and all military protocols were being followed.   The area where the filming was taking place in this instance was one where the soldiers had been in a heavy firefight a couple of weeks earlier....around an old, abandoned home within sight of the United States/Mexico border.  The Army had taken casualties and rendered many more at that point on the map.

      It could be pointed out that the armaments being carried by the soldiers could have destroyed the vehicle of the Minutemen with two clips and three seconds.   They could have killed all six or seven of the Minutemen there in less than five seconds, driven their bodies to a cavern two or three miles away, burned their cameras and tape recorders, and gone home.

       In the background, un-manned and not at-the-ready was a mobile mounted 50 cal. belt-fed machine gun, not covering the encounter between two Mexican soldiers and six or seven white-trash thugs who were armed, somewhat heavily.   The Old Gringo was amazed....genuinely did not know .....   that such a presence and such mendacity could be practiced by American people.   And they are so stupid that they think that there are not several hundred thousand old Confederates out here who can readily interpret what the exchange of a conversation is when conducted in Spanish.     How could anyone be so stupid?

Inbreeding?

      The Old Gringo laments that he must confide in the OROG community that he reviewed about 30 of these "trophy films" and encounters, finding each and every one to be flawed in terms of honest presentation of the facts.     It seemed to be almost like an attempt to cause some incident that would give cause for the American government to step in with righteous indignation and disarm the American public...."for its own good".

      As you all know, the Old Gringo is absolutely convinced that the ATF "fast and furious and stupid" program of delivering weapons that could be readily transformed to automatic-fire to Cartel members was most certainly a straw-dog designed to shut down legitimate trade and ownership of firearms among private individuals in the United States.

      It was all very depressing.  Very disturbing.

With some considerable lamentation, we render our gratitude for your continued indulgence.

El Gringo Viejo   

Caught in the Act

A frenzied group of crackers going into a rabid, racist celebration at a recent KKK-GOP-Tea Party event.

The following is taken from the enlightened pen of Michael Barone, syndicated columnist:

     Is Herman Cain a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination? It's a question no one in the pundit world was asking until the past week.

Cain has never held public office. When he ran for the Senate in Georgia in 2004 he lost the primary by a 52 to 26 percent margin.

He has zero experience in foreign or defense policy, where presidents have the most leeway to set policy. When questioned about the Middle East earlier this year he clearly had no idea what the "right of return" is.

His solid performance in the Fox News/Google debate Sept. 22 didn't get pundits to take his chances seriously.

Neither did his 37 to 15 percent victory over Rick Perry in the Florida straw poll Sept. 24. That was taken as a response to Perry's weak debate performance and a tribute to Cain for showing up and speaking before the 2,657 people who voted.

But Republicans around the nation seem to have responded the same way. The Fox News poll conducted Sept. 25-27 showed Cain with 17 percent of the vote -- a statistically significant jump from the 5 percent he had been averaging in polls taken in previous weeks.

And a SurveyUSA poll of Florida Republicans conducted Sept. 24-27 showed Cain trailing Mitt Romney by only 27 to 25 percent, a statistical tie. That's very different from the Florida polls conducted by Public Policy Polling Sept. 22-25 and Quinnipiac Sept. 14-19, both of which showed Cain with 7 percent.

We will see whether other national or state polls show Cain with a similar surge. If so, then there's a real possibility that Cain could win enough primaries and caucuses to be a real contender.

That possibility is already being taken seriously by the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger. Henninger argued in a Sept. 29 column that Cain's success in business -- engineering turnarounds in Burger King's Philadelphia stores and Godfather's Pizza nationally -- made him a plausible candidate.

"Unlike the incumbent," Henninger wrote, "Herman Cain has at least twice identified the causes of a large failing enterprise, designed goals, achieved them and by all accounts inspired the people he was supposed to lead."

Cain's business success, his "9-9-9" tax plan, his generally conservative stands on issues, the youtube clip showing him debating Bill Clinton on health care in 1994 -- all of these help account for his apparent surge in the polls.

But I suspect there are a couple of other factors. One is likability. Romney's attempts at ingratiation are awkward, and Perry's charm is lost on most non-Texans. But Cain is, as the Atlantic's liberal analyst Chris Good concedes, "undeniably likeable."

Another thing going for him is race. White conservatives like to hear black candidates who articulate their views and will vote for them: check out Rep. Tim Scott of Charleston, S.C.

In this, white conservatives resemble white liberals, who liked hearing Barack Obama articulate their views and were ready to vote for him too. This is what Joe Biden was getting at with his awkward 2007 comment that Obama was a "clean" black candidate.

White moderates are ready to support black candidates too, as Obama showed in the 2008 general election.

Cain claims that he could get one-third of the black vote in a general election. There's no way to rigorously test that.

But it finds some support in Scott Rasmussen's polls, which have been regularly pitting 10 current or possible candidates against Obama. Rasmussen finds Romney ahead by 2 percent and Chris Christie trailing by 1 percent. The other candidate closest to Obama, trailing by 5 percent, is Cain.

Moreover, Cain holds Obama to the lowest share of the vote, 39 percent, of any of the 10 Republicans. That may be because some black voters desert Obama when Cain is the opponent.

Further support can be found in the Low Country of South Carolina, where Tim Scott won with 65 percent of the vote in 2010 in a district where John McCain won just 56 percent and where 20 percent of the population is black. No other Republican freshmen in the Old South ran so far ahead of McCain.

All this speculation may be getting far ahead of the facts. Cain still has significant liabilities as a candidate and could make a disqualifying mistake any time. But he's beginning to look like a contender.

Michael Barone,The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.

And this is why the wealthy and the rich cannot be taxed in a manner different from the remainder of the population

Roseanne Barr: Behead Bankers,

     The best points are simply stated.   The ghosts of Robespierre and Voltaire are always lurking around to invade men's souls.    The Communists, Socialists, and Liberals (all the same thing....just different time-lines) are usually quick to retreat to a point in the argument about "fairness" that the rich and the wealthy do not "need" such-and-such amount of money.

      The Old Gringo would yield to that argument were it possible to assure the world that Hillary, Roseanne, Rosie, Pelosi, Adolf Shicklegrueber Heidler, and Jane Fonda would not be allowed to meet during girls' night out at the bierhaus and establish the maximum allowable income for Americans to be set at....say.....15,000.oo/annum.

      A lot could be said for the efforts of heroic defenders of the downtrodden, however.   They can invent money from somebody's stash and give it away for free.   That way the money does not cost anything because the government pays for it.   All you have to do is line up at the Reverend Mr. Sharpton's door and let him funnel the the money from Father O'bamaham's stash to your pocket.   Voila!  no more poor people.

Al Sharpton's office admits handing out possibly bogus stimulus check forms...

     There is really no way to understand how any of this is tolerated.   When ENRON's chief executive asked former Clinton Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin to intervene with the Treasury Secretary of the Bush administration in order to "work something out" for ENRON, Rubin himself observed that his request was "self-serving" and "probably out of order".  The Bush administration did nothing to stop the demise of another Ponzi Scheme....ENRON's marketting system....and the company collapsed as it should have.    Would that they had allowed the other organizations to "cross over" into corporate history six years later.

      The government cannot stimulate anything without de-stimulating something else.   It is natural law.    The effort to accomplish the magic trick of robbing Peter to pay Paul and to have no negative effect has failed at every attempt.
       The juggernaut of the European Economic Community, long burdened by incredible socialist imperatives, is now trying to figure out how to make the grumpy, productive northern Europeans pay for the profligacy of the happy, lazy southern Europeans.   It cannot be done.   It will lead to social disorders that have not been seen since Bastille.

Good morning.   Have a great decade.  And....thanks for your attention.
El Gringo Viejo....

Mexico Between Now and the July Presidential Elections

     Time has come and we are at that astrological point governed by the Planet Dufus and the Constellation Gobbledegoock, permitting both the United States of America and the Estados Unidos Mexicanos to try to elect something resembling a president and various other important people.

      Much will be made of the fact that Mexico has had a "violent drug war" which has managed to have caused the deaths of 45,000 people "since President Calderon was elected...."   or "since President Calderon plunged Mexico into its present chaos".    Since Felipe Calderon Hinojosa is a member of the Partido de Accion Nacional...(re:  Republican)...the Mainstream Media has to point out that bad things happen when Republicans are involved.

      The press will also laud the present President of the USA for having "kept the United States safe....the Border safe....from spill-over violence".    Because of the efforts of the eminently qualified and competent  Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder, and of course the President...the United States have not had to suffer any of the fall-out from what is happening just across the Rio Grande. (???)

       For some reason or another, the "drug war' in the United States actually is resulting in about 25,000/year people being killed in home invasions, street-corner domain disputes, gang violence, and the general torpor and depravity associated with the illegal drug and marijuana trade since the ordination of Father O'bamaham. It did not start with him, and it certainly will not end eith his departure.   We in the United States are a bit ahead of what is going on in Mexico in per capita per year actuarials.     But the beam in our eye is a designer beam so its at least somehow better than their mote.

      All of this has been stated before here on this site.  We have also pointed out that many of the people who compose the numbers cited are not actually people one might wish to have heading up the local church choir or Boy Scout troop in your neighbourhood.

      Quite frankly we lament only the innocents and the honest, to somewhat honest, police and those Mexican Soldiers and Naval Infantrymen  which compose about 10% of the 45,000 or so who have been lost.  In the United States, one need only watch a few episodes of The First 48 and other such programs to see what corners our addictions and the public assistance programs and the lack of a catechism...any catechism, Protestant or Orthodox.... has had upon large....huge...swaths of our demography.   It is almost a waste of space here to comment about where we have arrived when three people will gun down in cold blood four other people over an issue like 10 pounds of marijuana.    Then it is a further waste of space here to express consternation that an entire public housing project's population avoids assisting the forces of order in trying to bring any process of justice to bear on the issue.

     The OROGs know that El Gringo Viejo lathers up on this issue every now and then, but it is coming around again.   A report has been prepared and will be issued to the public soon that will declare definitively that "spill-over violence" associated with the organised elements involved with the trafficking of marijuana and illegal narcotics and illegal aliens is present....has been present....and will continue to grow throughout the United States.    The study includes the participation of two high-ranking United States Army General Officers (retired) among others.   It is a fairly measured and substantially accurate report and analysis.

       The Old Gringo's point has always been that "spill-over" has been with us for 40 years.   It does not originate in Mexico.  It comes from all over the world through Canada and Mexico.   It is not my fault or your fault.   It is, however, the harvest of the seeds of self-indulgence and lack of self-discipline on the part of the popular American culture.   The Old Gringo is content with the notion that there are enough very fine vices with beer, wine, whiskey, liqueurs, liquors, and tobaccos to please and/or make fools of us all, without these other things that will more quickly destroy, devastate, and dement us into perdition and that have no contribution to our health.   Has anyone ever smelled the difference between a really, really fine cigar and the way crack and crank smell? 

     In Mexico, the conservative PAN party is committed to the on-going and very real War against the cartels and the direct and indirect influence over Mexican society.    The centrist PRI, the Old Grey Lady of the Mexican political scene, is pretty much in the position of going along with a continuation of the military efforts against the cartels and their adjuncts with some tweeking here and there.   The extreme left Partido Revolucionario Democratico - PRD has stated that they will make peace with the cartels and allow them to go about their business since they only damage the United States and did not cause any damage to Mexico until the present President of Mexico decided that he personally wanted to take over the drug trade.   So...


     This will be an interesting period of paralleling campaigns for the next few months.   They will be full of sound and fury, that is certain.   If they signify anything remains to be seen.



Thanks for dropping by!
El Gringo Viejo