Oh! Fiddle - Faddle!! Did I miss the inauguration?

I thought all of that stuff was for tomorrow!   Why didn't someone wake me up?

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans - Happy Trails 'til Then

    Thankfully, the nightmare ends, at least briefly.  Perhaps we can change from the nightmare of marxist narcissism and meld into just a bad dream of bluster restrained by intelligence and a modicum of patriotism.

    We pray that the new President can avoid the addiction of jumping behind the 30 calibre, water-cooled, belt-fed machine-twitter and blasting away against any dolt who makes ridiculous, scurrilous, and offensive statements.  An adult...who is President....should be strong enough to count to ten and say to himself, "My mother told me to count to ten and consider the source."   Responding to Lewis when you are having meeting with "mediocre Negroes" like Martin Luther King III, Jim Brown, etc.? Please, Donald!  Lewis has been a mendacious, senile, crooked race-baiting slug for the past 30 years.  He is irrelevant.

  

     The studied eloquence of Martin Luther King, III (who is very much like his name-sake grandfather...a true hero) stands in stark contrast to the race-racketeers such as Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and Lewis, and Waters, and Jackson - Lee.

    We leave with a vintage photograph of the first 30 calibre, water-cooled, belt-fed, machine twitter so that the OROGs can have an idea of what a nearly 50 pound armament might look like.

El Gringo Viejo's father trained on one of these during his service in the United States Army, 1st Cavalry (Mounted), 12th Regiment, Headquarters Squadron - 1929 through 1933.

Thanks for your attention!

El Gringo Viejo

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Gene Pitney - The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (stereo 16:9)

Most people are unaware that this movie was inspired by the fact that Osama bin Valence was taken down by Barack O'bamaham in his secret ninja moments.  Father Obamaham is writing his memoirs now, and some say he will detail how he refused to "spike the ball in the end zone" more than  about three million, two hundred thousand times.....but never on the golf course.

Trump and his etherial cure for Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative (OSMI)

    Our betters and the Wise Ones come again upon us. They simply want to save us from ourselves.  So "hope and change" becomes "make America great again" and the dull and those who care not to ask, "What specifically do you mean when you say 'hope America and change great again?" are thrusted back into their frustrations.   Or is it 'petards'?

     And, once again, we have chosen neither the low road not the high road.  We, the most advanced nation on Planet Earth,  have slid into shortstop in the great American game of political baseball.

    It reminded El Gringo Viejo of that little game that was sold in airports and bus stations around the nation.  It is pictured to the left here.  I bought one in San Antonio while on a boring trip full of boring nothing to do, surrounded by old boring people.  The game was really boring too.  So I was happy for the luxury of being perfectly miserable and totally consumed with both self-loathing and the joy of thinking that perhaps I was making the old boring people miserable.   Those were the fun times, right?

Johnathon Gruber -
 Was glad that Americans were too
 stupid to understand the Obama
 Socialised Medicine Initiative

     So, here we are.  Father Obamaham could not put together Gruber's Grand Plan for the Stupid well enough to convince the American populace to essentially commit slow suicide and pay through the nose for it.  And now comes SuperDon to show everyone how it's done.  "The Donald", whom I am sure has the best of intentions unlike his predecessor, is going to try to saw the lady in the box in two.  He's never done the trick before, but he did assure the pretty girl that "everything is going to be fine, don't worry about a thing".  After all he had seen Maxwell Smart do it on television during an episode of "Get Smart".  Or was it the Smothers Brothers?

     At this point he has figured out that paying for the dolts, bums, street people, slugs, gang shooting victims, miracle babies, miracle anchor-babies, elderly orphans who have been put on the iceberg by their offspring, etc. is going to be expensive and the productive class will have to pay for it...in spades....and through the nose.   It is because he insists upon putting together a national programme.  He cannot help himself.  He, like all liberal, pseudo-Republicans, is a statist.  He believes that he and the Grubers on his team can make a "national health care system" at least as good as the one in Cuba.

     Of course, Mr. Superman is like O'bama because he knows that none of this affects him personally since he and his families are....you know....necessary....important to the greater good.  He and they will have whatever they need or want which is how what should be should be.   He, like Obama, and all the Progressives who are building Utopia on Planeta Tierra can keep pushing the little numbers until they all line up correctly.

     And when they are done, all they will have is a bunch of little numbers who all lined up correctly.   Boring.  But it only cost a silver quarter.

El Gringo Viejo
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Catching Up on Mexico and other topics

     We had a little under a couple of week's stay down at our little mud hut on the edge of civilisation and at the face of the Sierra Madre Oriental.   It was a remarkably arduous period with a prolonged periods (for the area) of temperatures hovering from 32 to 39 degrees....day and night, for four days calendar days and three nights.

(Left to Right) Cleopatra, Calico,
 and Smokey working as heaters
each for the other.

     El Gringo Viejo held out for a couple of days, but finally, as the temperature plunged even in the normally exempt interior of the adobe abode it was obvious that we would have to start burning the precious firewood.   The rule that we should not burn the firewood because there might be a greater need for it later had lost its lustre.  If not now, then when?....and if not here, then where? became the new general orders.

     There were a couple of the distant, really high peaks to our west and northwest that had snow, especially the Pen~a Nevada at 13,000 fasl and the Cerro Potosi that is just shy of 11,000 fasl .   Such were the conditions  this before departure, but the area was already beginning to show signs of entering into an early Spring episode as we departed early yesterday, Saturday, at 06:50, nearing daybreak.

     These are nice little collateral tales, but during these times Mexico really had a seizure that overshadowed even the misery of enduring Winter for this Old Gringo.  To wit:

GASOLINAZO!!!

    To the right one can see a blockade of a PEMEX station between Cd. Juarez and Chihuahua, Chihuahua.   This scene was repeated in several score places across the Republic during the period from 3 January to around the 10th of this month.
      The Palacio de Gobierno (State Capitol Building) in Monterrey was badly damaged by rioting vandals.  They destroyed many of the impressive stained glass portraits of venerable 

personages of the State of Nuevo Leon during the centuries.   Public and private property damages throughout the Republic totaled "easily over a billion dollars" according to one reliable analyst.
     If there was any positive information to come out of this matter it was that the police, private security guards, and military stood up to and into the anarchists and looters.  There were several thousand arrests in scores and hundreds of sites.  Particularly hurt were middle and high end commercial properties and several capital buildings and county main buildings in major provincial cities.  Even our capital city of Ciudad Victoria there were significant albeit brief disorders.  Thankfully, things calmed down as quickly as they had ignited.

     The aftermath will be slow to heal.  There is considerable bitterness at all levels against the present administration; i.e.- President Ernesto Pen~a Nieto et al, and "The Oligarchy of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional. 
     The arbitrary raising of prices on gasoline and diesel was a shock foisted on people who, as with most Americans, have no idea of what government control and market forces can do to foul up natural law.   Mexico, since the expropriation in 1938, has used the state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos as a monopolistic foil that slays many of the Left's ogres as well as working to enslave people to a certain customary dependence upon The Government.
     As I went down and back this last time, it was necessary to consider that many PEMEX stations were being shut down, blockaded, and /or sabotaged.   Many had been unable to off-load combustibles, be they high-test Supreme gasoline (half of which is supplied by EXXON - MOBIL), regular Green Pump, or diesel fuel, and therefore had had to literally shut down, save for personnel to at least throw the pump switches off in case of fire or whatever.
     The price of fuel had been increased a little more than 20% overnight, bringing the Supreme to around 3.90 or thereabouts in American dollars per gallon.  The regular fuel and diesel rose up to 3.45 plus or minus while other basic commodities and price controlled things were rising at or near the same rate or a little less.   It was a classic backwards step by statist economists who are attempting to "provide for those who have less" through anti-market price controls and labyrinth-like regulations.

     There was one article published by I believe a major Brit newspaper....perhaps The Guardian, that pointed out that the Mexicans were used to have the National Patrimony (oil) used as a way to "give the people" cheap energy, and "the people" resented having their "patrimony taken from them".   The reporter / observer was and probably remains a willing fool, and probably is making similar banal and inane statemenst in articles being dispatched even as your humble servant clatters away here in his cave.
     Diesel was used for about 50 years by the government as a tool to pacify the industrial and transportation "oligarchs".   For instance  even into the 1980s, a good quality diesel fuel was provided for the price of about 18 American cents per gallon.   And as for the notion that the Mexicans participated in some kind of "patrimonial subsidization" at all levels was and is silly to the point of being preposterous.  Mexican fuel prices, save for the "diesel deal" had always been from 60 to at times 100 per cent higher than American fuel at the retail level.
     Much of the difference in the cost was passed along to the Secretaria de Hacienda (Mexican Federal Treasury Secretariat) essentially as a tax levied on the automobile driving middle and upper economic classes.   That practice has continued up to the present, and as of the 3rd day of  January, 2017 it was re-accentuated.  So, as the OROG can clearly see, the GASOLINAZO has been alive and well for a long, long, long time.

    Fortunately for me, my fuel purchases were limited to two stops, one going down and one going back up at the same place, just to have enough....just in case.  I spent 400 pesos (about 20 USD), all told, for the Supreme fuel, which actually renders my old hoss about a 15% mileage increase as opposed to the regular.
     Also, people where we were took everything in stride, and a general calm has been restored.  The national demagogue-in-chief Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the Left's perpetual candidate for the presidency  every six years for the past quarter century, it seems, has been a little less than strident and hysterical while trying to stake out every left-of-centre vote that exists in Mexico before the next campaign begins in a couple of years.  Mon Diux!!  Seulement deux ans!!

More later,
El Gringo Viejo
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A View of the Recently Completed Planting of a Lime Orchard

     Next to the Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre one encounters the Hacienda de La Vega, a nearly 300 acre stretch along the El Coralillo section of the Rio Corona.  The entire surface of the La Vega spread, save for ten or twelve acres, was re-cleared of the old, worn out, repeatedly freeze damage Valencia oranges and prepared for the planting of a very special sour-sweet lime that has become heavily sought by purveyors in places like Mexico City, Europe, Japan, and especially in the United States of America.

     Our neighbour, the owner of what you see before you has put a considerable pretty penny in the re-clearing, research, sapling purchase, and planting of this new venture.   There is nothing haphazard about the layout or preparations.  Buyers are have already been circulating around this prime growing area, looking for those who have already decided to go the route of the fancy limes.

     One thing that the Santa Engracia area has going for it is its unique mix of very wet, very dry, very hot, to pretty darned chilly climate.   Being right on the Tropic of Cancer, near the coastal lowlands, and adjacent to mountains ranging from 5,000 to 13,000 feet bring upon the citrus, and especially these limes, certain very positive responses.   Freezes are very rare, and even at that, these particular limes are very recuperative.   Limes usually do better than oranges and grapefruit with cold stress, and these particular ones, to restate, are even more resilient than the norm.

     In keeping with the way business runs and must run during these times in Mexico, the family prefers to remain a bit hermitic concerning various of the fine points and other administrative matters about this investment.  For my part, I am glad to see my friend go into the venture while still young enough to enjoy the fruits of his and his wife's labours. (Is that a pun?)

More later,

El Gringo Viejo