Encouragement and Disappointment

     It is cause for a bit of celebration that the visit to Mexico by the Bishop of Rome has been so successful.  His willingess to move among the populace and to lecture as well as listen has been a big hit.   He is put in the position of having a hard act to follow, since the Polish Pope had established a very particular positive relationship with Mexico.

     It does give the public a chance to see that the broad expanses of Mexico and the broad mass of people are still believing in something bigger than themselves.    The scenes around Guanajuato State, including Leon, Guanajuato (city), Silao, and various places in the Colonial Zone of Mexico's Central Highlands.
     It is hard to convince my people of the certainty that if Mexico were to collapse because of the cartel business and the general seductive nature of nihilisitic anarchy, it would lead to the certain demise of both Cental America and much, if not all of the United States.  While the tail rarely shakes the dog, in this case the tail is very large.

     It is necessary for both the United States and Mexico to repair their institutions both of religion and of governance.   Both countries are terribly in need of repair for any number of reasons, almost all of them leading back to the failure to practice a common law approach, and a recognition of a God-based religion based upon the precepts laid out in the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule.    Here are a few pictures of nice places.   Oddly, El Gringo Viejo found one article from AP that told more truth than fiction.   Most of the MSM articles have been between sneering and loathing of the "Show With Men in Skirts -  The Next Chapter of Opiate for the Masses".

     Most of what follows here is either neutral or positive.   The issue of the Cristeros and the Cristero War is very complex, and one which shows that conservative, Christian forces can and do roll back progressives and Communists when we put our minds to it.   It takes courage and the willingness to sacrifice everything at time, but it can be done.

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SILAO, Mexico (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI urged Mexicans to wield their faith against poverty and drug violence, telling hundreds of thousands of worshippers in an open-air Mass on Sunday that they would find hope if they purify their hearts.

Benedict delivered his message in the shadow of the Christ the King monument, one of the most important symbols of Mexican Christianity, which recalls the 1920s Roman Catholic uprising against the anti-clerical laws that forbade public worship services such as the one Benedict celebrated.

The pope flew over the monument in a Mexican military Superpuma helicopter en route to the Mass at Bicentennial Park, where he rode in the popemobile through an enthusiastic crowd estimated at 350,000.

Often seen as austere and reserved, Benedict charmed a country that adored his charismatic predecessor, John Paul II, by donning a broad-brimmed Mexican sombrero as he was driven to the altar at the sun-drenched park.

     "Some young people rejected the pope, saying he has an angry face. But now they see him like a beloved grandfather," said Cristian Roberto Cerda Reynoso, 17, a seminarian from Leon.

Before the ceremony, the vast field was filled with noise, as people took pictures with their cell phones and passed around food.     As the Mass started, all fell silent, some dropping to their knees in the dirt and gazing at the altar or giant video screens.     In his homily, Benedict encouraged Mexicans to purify their hearts to confront the sufferings, difficulties and evils of daily life. It has been a common theme in his first visit to Mexico as pope: On Saturday he urged the young to be messengers of peace in a country that has witnessed the deaths of more than 47,000 people in a drug war that has escalated during a government offensive against cartels.

     "At this time when so many families are separated or forced to emigrate, when so many are suffering due to poverty, corruption, domestic violence, drug trafficking, the crisis of values and increased crime, we come to Mary in search of consolation, strength and hope," Benedict said in a prayer at the end of Mass.

      "She is the mother of the true God, who invites us to stay with faith and charity beneath her mantle, so as to overcome in this way all evil and to establish a more just and fraternal society."

The reference to Mary is particularly important for Mexicans, who revere the Virgin of Guadalupe as their patron saint. His reference to immigration resonated in Guanajuato, which is among the Mexican states sending the most migrant workers north.  Many said the pope showed a deep understanding of the challenges Mexico faces. While they said things may not change as a result, at least the pontiff gave them hope.

     "It was really gratifying," industrial engineer Juan Jose Ruiz Moreno, 39, said after the Mass. "In his words there was a great understanding of us, the Mexican people."   Some in the crowd wore white tunics with images of Benedict, the monument and Mexico's beloved Virgin of Guadalupe, and reading: "The entire church asks for peace in Mexico."

      "People leave for the good of their families," said Jose Porfirio Garcia Martinez, 56, an indigenous farmworker who came to the mass with 35 others from Puebla. "For us it's difficult, not seeing them for 10 years, communicating by phone and by Internet."  The Vatican said Benedict wanted to come to Guanajuato to see and bless the Christ the King statue, something that John Paul II had wanted, but was never able to do.

     With its outstretched arms, the 72-foot (22-meter) bronze monument of Christ "expresses an identity of the Mexican people that contains a whole history in relation to the testimony of faith and those who fought for religious freedom at the time," said Monsignor Victor Rene Rodriguez, secretary general of the Mexican bishops conference.     Before the Mass, the pope presented Mexico with a gift of a mosaic of Jesus Christ that will be placed at the monument.   After nightfall Sunday, the pope will remotely inaugurate its new lighting system.

     Guanajuato state was the site of some of the key battles of the Cristero War, so-called because its protagonists said they were fighting for Christ the King. Historians say about 90,000 people died before peace was restored. The region remains Mexico's most conservatively Catholic.  With roads closed, pilgrims walked for miles to the Mass with plastic lawn chairs, water and backpacks. Old women walked with canes. Some Mass-goers wrapped themselves in blankets or beach towel-sized Vatican flags, trekking past vendors selling sun hats, flags, potato chips and bottles of juice.

      Hundreds of young priests in white and black cassocks, waiting to pass through the metal detectors, shouted "Christ Lives!" and "Long Live Christ the King!" — the battle cry of the Cristeros.

The 84-year-old pope will be going to Cuba on Monday.

___

Associated Press writer Michael Weissenstein reported this story in Silao and Nicole Winfield reported in Leon. AP writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Guanajuato and E. Eduardo Castillo in Leon contributed to this report.

In this picture made available by the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano, Pope Benedict XVI celebrates a Mass in Colegio de Miraflores in Leon, Mexico, Saturday March 24, 2012. Benedict arrived in Mexico Friday afternoon, a decade after the late Pope John Paul II's last visit, and will travel to Cuba on Monday. (AP Photo/Osservatore Romano)

Pilgrims walk along a road toward the site where Pope Benedict XVI will give a Sunday Mass in Bicentennial Park near Silao, Mexico, Saturday, March 24, 2012. Benedict arrived in Mexico, Friday afternoon, a decade after the late Pope John Paul II's last visit. The pontiff's weeklong trip to Mexico and then to Cuba on Monday is his first to both countries. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Faithful wave to Pope Benedict XVI as he passes by in his popemobile on his way to the Plaza de la Paz or Peace Plaza, in Guanajuato, Mexico, Saturday March 24, 2012. Benedict arrived in Mexico Friday afternoon, a decade after the late Pope John Paul II's last visit. The pontiff's weeklong trip to Mexico and then to Cuba on Monday is his first to both countries. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Pope Benedict XVI waves during the symbolic key ceremony of the city of Guanajuato, Mexico, Saturday March 24, 2012. Benedict arrived in Mexico Friday afternoon, a decade after the late Pope John Paul II's last visit. The pontiff's weeklong trip to Mexico and then to Cuba on Monday is his first to both countries. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

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Allow me to tell you why, Jesse.

Jesse Jackson

Mr. Jackson,
 
     Why has it taken so long for everyone else to recognise the chronic injustices that African Americans face?   My grandfather lost two brothers serving with the 96th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers in 1863, in two separate engagements with Confederate Divisions just before and just after the encounter at Gettysburg.
     Jefferson Davis had a slave as the Executive Officer of his plantation and business interests before and during the War.   After the War Between the States that same man stayed as a freeman in Davis's organisation.  He was known to be the best estate administrator in Mississippi, better than any white man.
     Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, favoured the sending of Black people to "dig the Canal" in  Panama, because they were genetically accustomed to the heat and humidity, and because they would not be so sorely missed.
    Jefferson Davis's wife essentially sued for possession of a slave child, owned by a Black man, because she encountered him in Richmond beating the child with a quirt.  She gained the child only after essentially adopting him.   The judge said she would have a claim if she would provide hearth , home, and sustenance to the child, essentially becoming his mother.   The child, Jim Limber, became a fixture at the table of the Jefferson family, and immediately bonded with the Jefferson's eldest son.   The society ladies tittered that Mrs. Davis had obtained herself a "pet Negro", and nobody doubted that Jim Limber had welded into the family.   Mary Todd Lincolnm, on the other hand,  threw ash trays and candy dishes at even her closest Negro employees and friends, blaming them for the "horrid war"....
     The number one thing the Union occupation forces searched for as the Davis family 
withdrew to the South at the end of the War was not so much the President of the Confederacy, but rather the person of Jim Limber.   They found him with Mrs. Jefferson and the family and essentially kidnapped him and sent him either to the Bahamas or Jamaica.   Confederate sympathisers either gossiped, assumed, or thought that the Yankees had "silenced" him in a more certain way.   It is more probable that he was banished, like Elian Gonzalez.

A statue of Davis and his
son with Jim Limber, also his son

     Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, and the entire panoply of the Founding Fathers spent much of their time trying to find a way out of the stupidity of the peculiar institution....a way that would not confound the interests of anyone.    The best way was, of course, manumission, and the reinforcement of a stable, religiously based family unit.   Washington was successful in eliminating the practice of selling man, wife, and minor children apart one from the other, a novel idea in his times.

     Jesse Jackson and all the poverty pimps, Al Sharpton and all the race charlatans thrive on the poverty created by programs that "help" the black race in America.   AFDC, Section 8, Public Housing, food stamps, Head Start, WIC, medicaid, and the hundreds of other programs designed to soak the productive while enslaving the dregs, slugs, and criminal elements such programs produce.   Those programs are the life's blood of people like Jackson, Sharpton, and Farahkan.   The have especial ire for the conservative and productive black individuals, spewing hateful epithets and derision at them at every opportunity instead of holding them up as examples. 

     Jesse, you are not worth being allowed to even look at a picture of Booker Tecumseh Washington.   Your and yours are the ones who created the fact of the situation where we are now.   Black thugs murder 20,000 people every year, mostly other black people...some of whom are fellow thugs, many of whom are just normal people going along their way.    They commit something on the order of 300,000 other felonies every year.   Why? Because they have no catechism.   They have no spiritual anchor.  It is not because somebody said a "word" to them....the same word they use to identify themselves when speaking in private or even in public.    No, Jesse, these are the spawn of your works.

     Jesse, you are a piece of scum.   You strutted back to the kitchen, laughing about how you spit into the "rich white crackers soup" when you had what was a pretty high-faluttin' job as a very young waiter at the Country Club down in Carolina.  It was your formative incident.   Then you threatened the black people in the kitchen when they turned you in to the management of the Country Club.   They had class...you have none, and you've been "gettin' back at the man" for that incident ever since.

    You are a shakedown artist....a protection racketeer....and oddly, a perfect example of whitetrash.

Please leave and go to Cuba or Venezuela, where you can putrify with the other old socialists.
El Gringo Viejo