Friday, January 31, 2014
WWJS? (What would Jamey say)
Thursday, January 30, 2014
From: Elaine Maley [mailto:maley@centurytel.net]
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2014 9:31 AM
Subject: going 'Coastal"
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2014 9:31 AM
Subject: going 'Coastal"
Some of you have enjoyed the luxury of living on the salt water all of your life. The rest of us, while disadvantaged, occasionally got the thrill of ’going to the coast’. Letting that rumor slip, often while getting everyone ready for church, jump started the entire family into a bee hive of cooperation and perfect behavior. All eyes were then turned to the sky anxiously looking for bad weather that might derail the trip. Anyone in the back seat who made a boneheaded remark about it ‘looking like rain’ chanced an elbow to the ribs. We always figured if we could get past Waycross we were in the clear. We didn’t realize our parents were either as determined to go as we were, or did not have the energy to quell the riot that would have ensued. After all these years, that experience makes every day on the coast a beautiful day, no matter the weather. Raining sideways across the marsh is a particular favorite.
Super Bowl this Sunday. Several hours of New Jersey traffic, another two hours of ‘enhanced ‘ security checks, then five hours of 11 degree temps to see a football game. Ditch those $2,000.00 tickets and watch the game with some comfort food from the Crab Co.
Rhonda and the Relics February 16. Oldway Mid-Stars next Sunday.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
The hardest song I've ever tried to learn.
So far. The bass line is insane. The time signature constantly changes. And I love it.
What'soever I've feared
Has come to life
And what'soever I've fought off
Became my life.
Just when everyday
Seemed to greet me with a smile
Sunspots have faded
And now I'm doing time
Now I'm doing time
'Cause I fell on black days
I fell on black days (Black days)
Whomsoever I've cured
I've sickened now
And whomsoever I've cradled
I've put you down
I'm a search light soul
They say
But I can't see it
In the night
I'm only faking when I get it right
When I get it right
'Cause I fell on black days
I fell on black days
How would I know
That this could be my fate?
How would I know
That this could be my fate?
(Bridge)
To what you wanted to see good
Has made you blind
And what you wanted to be yours
Has made it mine
So don't you lock up something
That you wanted to see fly
Hands are for shaking
No, not tying
No, not tying
I sure don't mind a change
I sure don't mind a change
Yeah, I sure don't mind
I sure don't mind a change
I sure don't mind a change
'Cause I fell on black days
I fell on black days (Black days)
How would I know
That this could be my fate?
How would I know
That this could be my fate?
How would I know
That this could be my fate?
How would I know
That this could be my fate?
I sure don't mind a change...
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Why do months have different number of days?
In ancient times, when calendars were first put into place, the year-measured by the cycle of changing seasons-was divided into months. The lengths of the months varied slightly from one culture to the next, but the basic length-from 28 to 31 days-was consistent across many cultures. That number of days was based on the cycle of the moon, which lasts about 29 and one-half days and is easily noticed by just observing the moonlit sky. The months could not all have the same number of days because the number of days in a year, approximately 365, is not divisible by 28, 29, 30, or 31. In the time of Roman emperor Julius Caesar, who instituted the Julian calendar in 45 b.c., it was decided that all months would have 30 or 31 days, except February, which at that time had 29 days. Why did February get short-changed? Before the Julian calendar, the new year began in March, and perhaps simply because February was the last month of the year, it was seen as the logical choice for having the fewest number of days. One version of calendar history relates how February came to have 28 days. After Julius Caesar's death, the month that was then known as Quintilis was renamed July in his honor. During the reign of Julius's successor, Augustus Caesar, the month that then had the name Sextilis was renamed in honor of the new emperor as August. While July had 31 days, August only had 30, and in order to make his month as long (and as important) as Julius's month, Augustus took a day from February and added it to August. From then on August had 31 days and February 28 (except on leap years, when it once again has 29 days).
A GREAT VIDEO OF HOW IT WAS IN MY TEENAGE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJMz2OcFQRk&list=PL02ADD23AD896A4F7
I AM NOT SURE JUST EXACTLY HOW I STUMBLED ON THIS
However I am proud to have discovered it, and I'm glad to add it to the Gazettes collection.
Thanks
Jimmy
I AM NOT SURE JUST EXACTLY HOW I STUMBLED ON THIS
However I am proud to have discovered it, and I'm glad to add it to the Gazettes collection.
Thanks
Jimmy
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
The Difference Between Men and Women
Let's say a guy named Fred is attracted to a woman named Martha. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.
And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Martha, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"
And then, there is silence in the car.
To Martha, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.
And Fred is thinking: Gosh. Six months.
And Martha is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily towards, I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?
And Fred is thinking: ...so that means it was...let's see...February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means...lemme check the odometer...Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.
And Martha is thinking: He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed - even before I sensed it - that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.
And Fred is thinking: And I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.
And Martha is thinking: He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.
And Fred is thinking: They'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty...scumballs.
And Martha is thinking: Maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.
And Fred is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it right up their...
"Fred," Martha says aloud.
"What?" says Fred, startled.
"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have...oh dear, I feel so..."(She breaks down, sobbing.)
"What?" says Fred.
"I'm such a fool," Martha sobs. "I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse."
"There's no horse?" says Fred.
"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" Martha says.
"No!" says Fred, glad to finally know the correct answer.
"It's just that...it's that I...I need some time," Martha says.
(There is a 15-second pause while Fred, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)
"Yes," he says. (Martha, deeply moved, touches his hand.)
"Oh, Fred, do you really feel that way?" she says.
"What way?" says Fred.
"That way about time," says Martha.
"Oh," says Fred. "Yes." (Martha turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)
"Thank you, Fred," she says.
"Thank you," says Fred.
Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Fred gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a college basketball game between two South Dakota junior colleges that he has never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it's better if he doesn't think about it.
The next day Martha will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification.
They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it either.
Meanwhile, Fred, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Martha's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: "Norm, did Martha ever own a horse?"
And that's the difference between men and women.
-Dave Barry
And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Martha, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"
And then, there is silence in the car.
To Martha, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.
And Fred is thinking: Gosh. Six months.
And Martha is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily towards, I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?
And Fred is thinking: ...so that means it was...let's see...February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means...lemme check the odometer...Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.
And Martha is thinking: He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed - even before I sensed it - that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.
And Fred is thinking: And I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.
And Martha is thinking: He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.
And Fred is thinking: They'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty...scumballs.
And Martha is thinking: Maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.
And Fred is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it right up their...
"Fred," Martha says aloud.
"What?" says Fred, startled.
"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have...oh dear, I feel so..."(She breaks down, sobbing.)
"What?" says Fred.
"I'm such a fool," Martha sobs. "I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse."
"There's no horse?" says Fred.
"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" Martha says.
"No!" says Fred, glad to finally know the correct answer.
"It's just that...it's that I...I need some time," Martha says.
(There is a 15-second pause while Fred, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)
"Yes," he says. (Martha, deeply moved, touches his hand.)
"Oh, Fred, do you really feel that way?" she says.
"What way?" says Fred.
"That way about time," says Martha.
"Oh," says Fred. "Yes." (Martha turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)
"Thank you, Fred," she says.
"Thank you," says Fred.
Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Fred gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a college basketball game between two South Dakota junior colleges that he has never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it's better if he doesn't think about it.
The next day Martha will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification.
They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it either.
Meanwhile, Fred, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Martha's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: "Norm, did Martha ever own a horse?"
And that's the difference between men and women.
-Dave Barry
Monday, January 20, 2014
A MESSAGE FROM THE SUNBURY CRAB COMPANY
The water temperature in the Sunbury Channel is 50 degrees. Crabs bury in the sand, fish stack up in deep water and don’t move, shrimp wad up in a hole and literally lay down. Couple of warm, sunny, days later and everything is back to normal. One advantage; micro-organisms that normally occur can’t survive cold temps, so the water is extremely clear. You can see the difference off the marina pier, but a nice slow boat ride is worth the effort.
Football wins the day this Sunday, music returns next week with the very excitable ‘Hit Man’.
The Sapphire Bullets put on a big show Jan. 25 at the Knights of Columbus building on Liberty St. in Savannah. Check with Phil McDonald in the guitar dept. of Portman’s music for info and tix.
Our Christmas gift collection of long sleeve Crab Co t-shirts rolled in the first week of January. Don’t miss this opportunity to make a selection before we fashionably cut the sleeves off in a desperate attempt to sell this stuff.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Jaws of Life
Questions in the eyes of the precious few
It's like they want to say "Man what's happened to you?"
I've got aches and pains where I didn't used to
And I kind of hope they've got 'em too
They're too polite to be direct
Too uptight to really connect
Scared to see our own reflection
Caught in the jaws of life
Caught in the jaws of life
Found myself chewed up like everyone else
It Made no difference what I thought
And who I was I still got caught
In the jaws of life
I walked in and I looked around
You never saw such a burned out crowd
Somebody said "Boy don't be thinking out loud
Because you know some of us were so proud
Just like you we had our days
You'd be surprised how fast they slipped away
We started out so young and bold
Now we're just a few more mortal souls
In the jaws of life"
Since those days it's been so long
Done some good and I done some wrong
Done some things I can tell you son
That If I'd known better I'd never have done
Still I search for something I can't see
They don't have what I need at the A&P
Better send John Wayne with the cavalry
Hope he gets here in time to rescue me
From the jaws of life
It's like they want to say "Man what's happened to you?"
I've got aches and pains where I didn't used to
And I kind of hope they've got 'em too
They're too polite to be direct
Too uptight to really connect
Scared to see our own reflection
Caught in the jaws of life
Caught in the jaws of life
Found myself chewed up like everyone else
It Made no difference what I thought
And who I was I still got caught
In the jaws of life
I walked in and I looked around
You never saw such a burned out crowd
Somebody said "Boy don't be thinking out loud
Because you know some of us were so proud
Just like you we had our days
You'd be surprised how fast they slipped away
We started out so young and bold
Now we're just a few more mortal souls
In the jaws of life"
Since those days it's been so long
Done some good and I done some wrong
Done some things I can tell you son
That If I'd known better I'd never have done
Still I search for something I can't see
They don't have what I need at the A&P
Better send John Wayne with the cavalry
Hope he gets here in time to rescue me
From the jaws of life
Friday, January 10, 2014
You were aware of nothing before you were born, but that thought does not cause you anxiety. Why then should the thought of death bother you? It is merely a return to the state you were in before you were born.
The point is to make yourself part of an historical continuum that extends from your ancestors, through you, and onward. The story is passed to us from our forefathers. We add our few pages, and then we pass it on to those who come after us. Make your contribution the best it can be. Do not squander your time in useless worrying.
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. :-)
The situation was not good on the Liberty Coast 150 years ago. Without a protective force, everyone was ordered off the sea islands. Darien had already been burned to the ground. Most of the local planters had removed all assets upland and kept a skeleton crew to run the place. Sunbury had a small detachment to man the guns and keep a sharp eye on the Federal gun boats visible in St. Catherine’s sound. One industry was thriving. By digging a well in the marsh, salt water was captured and could be boiled out to produce salt. At a time when everything was scarce, salt was particularly valuable since all the meat sent on the army supply trains had to be cured. The going price was $25 a bushel and it was said that a salt maker could realize $600 a day. As you cross the causeway onto Colonel’s Island, look left and you will see the salt flats. Nowadays it’s just a good place to catch fiddler crabs. We still keep one eye out for the Feds.
Sunbury recorded the first freeze in two years this week. Got the bananna crop in just in time.
Sunday music returns this week with a new twist. Members of Ambrosius will perform upstairs at the usual time. Give the bartender a knowing wink to get your $2 Bud Lite draft.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
A Tricky Question
By James McMurtry
I’ve been an avid reader of gun magazines since I was about nine years old. Reading about guns was one of my favorite methods of putting off homework. I can’t remember when I first saw Dick Metcalf’s byline, but it seems as if he’s been writing for one gun magazine or another more or less forever. I didn’t read much of Metcalf’s writing because he tended to write about gun law, a subject in which I had little interest at a young age. When putting off sixth grade history homework assignments, one does not want to see the word “Constitution” in a gun magazine. But the byline was always there somewhere in Shooting Times or Guns and Ammo, along with those of many others, Colonel Jeff Cooper, Skeeter Skelton, Jon Sundra, familiar names that inhabited one of my favorite refuges from the world of what had to be done. My favorites, Cooper and Skelton, have passed on. Mr. Metcalf is still among the living, but his byline has vanished.
“A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” —2nd Amendment, Constitution of the United States of America
In the column for which he was fired, titled, “Let’s Talk Limits”, published on the back page of the October 2013 issue of Guns and Ammo, Mr. Metcalf brought up a rather fine point of constitutional language, one that hadn’t occurred to me, anyway.
“Those last four words say ‘shall not be infringed’, they do not say, ‘shall not be regulated.’” Metcalf goes on to state that all Constitutional rights are regulated and need to be.
“Freedom of speech is regulated. You cannot falsely and deliberately yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre. Freedom of religion is regulated. A church cannot practice human sacrifice. Freedom of assembly is regulated. People who don’t like you can’t gather an ‘anti you’ demonstration on your front lawn without your permission. And it is illegal for convicted felons or the clinically insane to keep and bear arms… The question is, when does regulation become infringement?”
Mr. Metcalf brings up a tricky question, and one which a lot of Guns and Ammo readers and advertisers would rather no one ever even considered. The backlash was swift and vitriolic. Two major gun manufacturers threatened to stop doing business with G&A’s parent company. Nasty emails flooded in from readers, many of whom seemed to think that Metcalf had no understanding of the second amendment, when in fact Metcalf is a constitutional scholar who has taught at both Yale and Cornell. He has testified before Congress and helped draft the 1986 Volkmer-McLure Firearms Owners Protection Act. I’d be willing to bet Metcalf does have a pretty good understanding of the second amendment as well as several of the others.
I found it difficult to find Metcalf’s actual article online. I eventually found it through a link from Business Insider, and it is a well written piece. [Ed. note: you can click here to download a pdf of the original piece.] But when I first googled Metcalf’s name, all that seemed to come up were the reactions to the piece which would have been hilarious, were they not real reactions from real people. Someone called Metcalf a “Gun Control Collaborator.” Wow. We sure love to bring up Nazi analogies these days.
Way back in the seventies, I remember meeting people on the left who might have been as dogmatic as those I now meet on the right. They had ideas that they recited as mantras, but they hadn’t done much shooting. Some of did seem to think guns should be done away with. Maybe the modern NRA is a reaction to that. But the left seems to have moved on, preferring to worry about health care. And I quit the NRA when Charlton Heston was president. I just got sick of the rhetoric.
After forty years of the NRA’s shrill warnings that the government is coming to take our guns away, forty years during which the government hasn’t come to take our guns away, forty years during which gun laws in some states have become more lax, people are still dead certain that they’re about to lose their gun rights and they had better, therefore, buy all the guns they can right, by God, now.
“We are locked in a struggle with powerful forces in this country who will do anything to destroy the Second Amendment,” said Richard Venola, a former editor of Guns & Ammo. “The time for ceding some rational points is gone.” (New York Times, January 4, 2014)
I don’t think so, Mr. Venola, could you please name one of these “powerful forces” we keep hearing about? More likely we’re locked in a struggle to keep a profitable industry from slipping into marginal status. It’s happened before. There were some major bankruptcies and re-organizations among gun manufacturers in the nineties. I might have mentioned, in an earlier blog, that my favorite of my pistols is a ninety-year old Colt New Service in 44-40. It still works fine. It’s not likely to need to be replaced. Modern guns also tend to be well built, because if they’re not, lawsuits will happen. So very few guns ever need to be replaced, the only way to sell more guns is to make people want more guns. The scare tactic works well, especially when paired with a Democratic Administration. I was in a gun store that has an indoor range, waiting to sight in a rifle shortly after Obama was first elected President. The place was a zoo, and the staff was grinning ear to ear, bragging that they couldn’t keep black rifles on the shelves thanks to Obama. Ammo shelves look like something out of Castro’s Cuba these days. But Obama hasn’t taken our guns away as he was predicted to do, even in the wake of Newtown. Oh, and, Mr. Venola, you say, “The time for ceding some rational points is gone.” Surely you realize, Mr. Venola, that you just more or less admitted that there are some rational points that could be ceded.
If rational points don’t need to be ceded, they at least need to be discussed. We can’t have a nation without discussion and compromise. This culture war is stupid and completely unnecessary to anyone or anything, except possibly to the profits of a few. I haven’t studied the business models of gun manufacturers, but when I see a moronic conflict I usually smell money all over it and this one’s no different. People like myself who like guns will buy a gun and a box of shells now and then. Hysterical people who think they need guns and ammunition to fight off Wayne La Pierre’s mythical “jack booted government thugs” will buy a whole bunch of guns, and they’ll buy a case of 7.62 Soviet or 5.56 NATO whenever they can find one. So there is a bit of an incentive for the gun companies to want to keep people hysterical. I don’t think gun manufacturers are evil and I want them to stay in business so I can sample their products. They’re making cool stuff these days. They learned from the trials of the nineties, came up with innovative new production techniques (by which I mean, investment casting and the like, not Chinese slave labor) and are turning out highly functional, wonderfully accurate, yet affordable guns. That’s exactly what companies should do when they hit rough times. They seem to have made it through the rough spell. Must they still fan the flames of hysteria? I hate to think of all the rounds that will never be fired because Papaw got old and died and forgot to tell Junior where he buried his bullets. But our world turns on its next quarter’s profits and the quarterly report won’t care if the rounds were fired or buried as long as they were paid for first.
Of course, the gun industry is not the only industry contributing to our cultural divisions. Entertainment is all over it. And we seem to be mimicking the entertainment industry, devolving into a nation of stereotypes, one big reality show with a country/hip hop soundtrack, scripted and sculpted to resemble some Hollywood dream of every white man’s America, where rednecks are proud of the moniker, though their cotton farming great grandparents are spinning in their graves at the very notion, because they worked like hell to elevate their descendants from the mere suggestion of the term “redneck.” (I know, it’s not derogatory now, but I’m just barely old enough to remember when it was.) There’ seems to be no role in the script for people like Dick Metcalf, who refuse to mold to the stereotype.
Right, I was writing about the necessity of discussion in a free society. So was Mr. Metcalf.
“. . . our intention was to provoke a debate, not to incite a riot (which is illegal under laws regulating the 1st Amendment).” —Metcalf’s response to his firing, Outdoor Wire
We must have a discussion. We must grapple with Mr. Metcalf’s question, “. . .when does regulation become infringement?” Not many of us are likely to agree. Conclusions, if there are any, are likely to vary state to state. Good thing we have fifty states.
Oh, and could we please not ostracize our fellow Americans for pointing out simple linguistic distinctions such as the difference in meaning between the words “regulate” and “infringe?” And could we please not ostracize our fellow Americans for posing valid questions? We still call our country a democracy, therefore we have the right, and possibly the duty, to question.
***
Texas-based blogger, rocker and raconteur James McMurtry covers culture, politics and more for BLURT.Go here to read his earlier discussion of guns (along with mental illness, crime bills, etc.), “More Than Just a Tall Order,” which he wrote not long after the Sandy Hook tragedy.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Unchained Melody - Al Green
I once listened to it in agony but time has finally allowed me to listen quietly and drift back to fantastic memories.
Jimmy
After a little bit of research I'm sure that the first time I heard this song it was performed by Sam Cooke as I've discovered he recorded it in 1960.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Saturday, January 4, 2014
INEQUALITY ???????????????
When President Richard Nixon arrived in Beijing in 1972, Chairman Mao Zedong — with his Marxist revolution, Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution — had achieved an equality unrivaled anywhere.
That is, until Pol Pot came along.
There seemed to be no private cars on Beijing’s streets. In the stores, there was next to nothing on the shelves. The Chinese all seemed dressed in the same blue Mao jackets.
Today there are billionaires and millionaires in China, booming cities, a huge growing middle class and, yes, hundreds of millions of peasants still living on a few dollars a day.
Hence, there is far greater inequality in China today than in 1972.
Yet, is not the unequal China of today a far better place for the Chinese people than the Communist ant colony of Mao?
Lest we forget, it is freedom that produces inequality.
Even a partly free nation unleashes the natural and acquired abilities of peoples, and the more industrious and talented inevitably excel and rise and reap the greater rewards. “Inequality … is rooted in the biological nature of man,” said James Fenimore Cooper.
Yet for many people, from New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio to President Barack Obama to Pope Francis, income inequality is a curse in need of a cure, as there is today said to be an intolerable measure of such inequality.
But let us first inspect the measuring rod.
Though a family of four with $23,550 in cash income in 2013 qualified as living in poverty, this hardly tells the whole story.
Consider the leveling effect of the graduated income tax, about which Karl Marx wrote glowingly in his “Communist Manifesto.”
The top 1 percent of U.S. earners pay nearly 40 percent of U.S. income taxes. The top 10 percent pay 70 percent. The top 50 percent pay more than 97 percent of income taxes. The poor pay nothing.
Surely, trillions of dollars siphoned annually off the incomes of the most productive Americans — in federal, state and local income and payroll taxes — closes the gap somewhat.
Secondly, though 15 percent of U.S. families qualify as poor, measured by cash income, this does not take into account the vast assortment of benefits they receive.
The poor have their children educated free in public schools, from Head Start to K-12 and then on to college with Pell Grants. Their medical needs are taken care of through Medicaid. They receive food stamps to feed the family. The kids can get two or three free meals a day at school.
Housing, too, is paid for or subsidized. The poor also receive welfare checks and Earned Income Tax Credits for added cash.
In the late 1940s, our family had no freezer, no dishwasher, no clothes washer or dryer, no microwave, no air conditioning. We watched the Notre Dame-Army game on a black-and-white 8-inch DuMont.
Among American families in poverty today, 1 in 4 have a freezer. Nearly half have automatic dishwashers. Almost 60 percent have a home computer. About 2 in 3 poor families have a clothes washer and dryer. Eighty percent have cellphones.
Ninety-three percent of the poor have a microwave; 96 percent a color TV, and 97 percent a gas or electric stove. Not exactly les miserables.
Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation added up the cost in 2012 of the means-tested federal and state programs for America’s poor and low-income families. Price tag: $927 billion.
There are 79 federal programs, writes Rector, that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, social services, training and targeted education to poor and low-income Americans.
“If converted to cash, means-tested welfare spending is more than sufficient to bring the income of every lower-income American to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, roughly $44,000 per year for a family of four.”
Then there are the contributions of churches, charities and foundations.
Where in history have the poor been treated better?
Certainly not in the USA in the 1950s or during the Depression. Why, then, all this sudden talk about reducing the gap between rich and poor?
A good society will take care of its poor. But envy that others have more, and coveting the goods of the more successful, used to constitute two of the seven capital sins in the Baltimore Catechism.
At Howard University in 1965,
President Lyndon Johnson declared, “We seek not just … equality as a right … but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”
Yet the only way to make people who are unequal in talents equal in rewards is to use governmental power to dispossess some and favor others.
Alexis de Tocqueville saw it coming:
“The sole condition which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced … to a single principle.”
Get people to believe you are seeking the utopian goal of equality of all and there is no limit to the power you can amass.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”
That is, until Pol Pot came along.
There seemed to be no private cars on Beijing’s streets. In the stores, there was next to nothing on the shelves. The Chinese all seemed dressed in the same blue Mao jackets.
Today there are billionaires and millionaires in China, booming cities, a huge growing middle class and, yes, hundreds of millions of peasants still living on a few dollars a day.
Hence, there is far greater inequality in China today than in 1972.
Yet, is not the unequal China of today a far better place for the Chinese people than the Communist ant colony of Mao?
Lest we forget, it is freedom that produces inequality.
Even a partly free nation unleashes the natural and acquired abilities of peoples, and the more industrious and talented inevitably excel and rise and reap the greater rewards. “Inequality … is rooted in the biological nature of man,” said James Fenimore Cooper.
Yet for many people, from New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio to President Barack Obama to Pope Francis, income inequality is a curse in need of a cure, as there is today said to be an intolerable measure of such inequality.
But let us first inspect the measuring rod.
Though a family of four with $23,550 in cash income in 2013 qualified as living in poverty, this hardly tells the whole story.
Consider the leveling effect of the graduated income tax, about which Karl Marx wrote glowingly in his “Communist Manifesto.”
The top 1 percent of U.S. earners pay nearly 40 percent of U.S. income taxes. The top 10 percent pay 70 percent. The top 50 percent pay more than 97 percent of income taxes. The poor pay nothing.
Surely, trillions of dollars siphoned annually off the incomes of the most productive Americans — in federal, state and local income and payroll taxes — closes the gap somewhat.
Secondly, though 15 percent of U.S. families qualify as poor, measured by cash income, this does not take into account the vast assortment of benefits they receive.
The poor have their children educated free in public schools, from Head Start to K-12 and then on to college with Pell Grants. Their medical needs are taken care of through Medicaid. They receive food stamps to feed the family. The kids can get two or three free meals a day at school.
Housing, too, is paid for or subsidized. The poor also receive welfare checks and Earned Income Tax Credits for added cash.
In the late 1940s, our family had no freezer, no dishwasher, no clothes washer or dryer, no microwave, no air conditioning. We watched the Notre Dame-Army game on a black-and-white 8-inch DuMont.
Among American families in poverty today, 1 in 4 have a freezer. Nearly half have automatic dishwashers. Almost 60 percent have a home computer. About 2 in 3 poor families have a clothes washer and dryer. Eighty percent have cellphones.
Ninety-three percent of the poor have a microwave; 96 percent a color TV, and 97 percent a gas or electric stove. Not exactly les miserables.
Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation added up the cost in 2012 of the means-tested federal and state programs for America’s poor and low-income families. Price tag: $927 billion.
There are 79 federal programs, writes Rector, that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, social services, training and targeted education to poor and low-income Americans.
“If converted to cash, means-tested welfare spending is more than sufficient to bring the income of every lower-income American to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, roughly $44,000 per year for a family of four.”
Then there are the contributions of churches, charities and foundations.
Where in history have the poor been treated better?
Certainly not in the USA in the 1950s or during the Depression. Why, then, all this sudden talk about reducing the gap between rich and poor?
A good society will take care of its poor. But envy that others have more, and coveting the goods of the more successful, used to constitute two of the seven capital sins in the Baltimore Catechism.
At Howard University in 1965,
President Lyndon Johnson declared, “We seek not just … equality as a right … but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”
Yet the only way to make people who are unequal in talents equal in rewards is to use governmental power to dispossess some and favor others.
Alexis de Tocqueville saw it coming:
“The sole condition which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced … to a single principle.”
Get people to believe you are seeking the utopian goal of equality of all and there is no limit to the power you can amass.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”
The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Nine Rules for BS Busting and Critical Thinking
Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
From ROOTforAmerica.com
Wayne Allyn Root (W.A.R.) is a former Presidential candidate, the 2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee, and a Libertarian-conservative national media star. His new book, “The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide” is a #1 national best-seller in bookstores, as well as an Amazon #1 Finance and Conservative bestseller. A former CNBC anchorman and host (then known as Financial News Network), Root is the ultimate Capitalist Evangelist: a blue-collar S.O.B. (son of a butcher) turned CEO, small businessman, serial entrepreneur, business speaker, and TV/radio commentator on the topics of business, economics, entrepreneurship, and politics. Root is a regular guest on Fox News, as well as on hundreds of conservative talk radio shows across the United States. His opinions reach tens of millions of Americans as a regular columnist and commentator for many of the most popular political and business websites, including FoxNews.com. He also writes regularly for The Washington Times. He is the bestselling author of eight books. Root serves as national spokesman for several companies, as well as a Senior Economic Advisor. Root is also well known in the television and media industries. He has hosted, starred and produced many television shows. Today, he is a producer of the highest-rated television show on Travel Channel. Because of his success in the diverse fields of business, media, sports, entertainment and publishing, Root was awarded his own 180-pound granite star in the Las Vegas Walk of Stars. Only 60 legends in the history of Las Vegas have received a star on Las Vegas Boulevard. A native New Yorker and graduate of prestigious Columbia University, this Capitalist Evangelist proudly resides in Nevada, a state with no income tax. His website is ROOTforAmerica.com.
THE BULLYING, LYING, SPYING, TYRANT IN THE WHITE HOUSE. By Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty
Hello, I’m Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty. Happy New Year 2014. Unfortunately, happy days aren’t here again. I can’t lie to you. I can’t make something up to pacify you during a national holiday. My New Year’s gift to you is the truth. You’ve got to hear it if you want to save America, save your job or business, save your civil rights and freedoms, and save your children’s or grandchildren’s future.
The truth is shocking and disturbing. The truth is we have a tyrant in the White House. His level of bullying, lying, spying, distorting, manipulating, intimidating, demonizing and using propaganda to cram his policies down our throats is unlike any President in history. His name is Barack Obama. But it might as well be some Marxist thug like Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez or the old leaders of East Germany. The result is something none of us ever imagined: America living in decline, crisis and fear.
An even better analogy is to compare Obama to Chicago’s own Al Capone. We have an organized crime gangster living in the White House who believes the ends justify the means. He’s playing the meanest, dirtiest game that has ever been played in D.C. Let me explain the tricks of the gangster’s trade and how we are being played.
First, Obama uses his army of government employees to fix elections by intimidating critics and destroying his political opposition. The Tea Parties won the 2010 elections in a historic landslide. So just like the dictator/gangster Obama is, he used the Internal Revenue Service to attack, persecute and bankrupt them. He sucked out their life, energy and enthusiasm. The result: Amid the worst economy since the Great Depression, Obama won the election with his army of government employees doing the dirty work.
And just to be sure, Obama’s loyal government employee goons in the Census Bureau created fraudulent data about jobs in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Like all organized crime, the books were cooked. And I believe the fraud continues unabated every month. The jobs reports are either outright crooked, just made up out of thin air or certainly manipulated to make it look like we have a jobs recovery. We don’t.
That’s how gangsters and tin pot dictators stay in power: through an army of brutal enforcers doing whatever it takes to keep the boss in power. We don’t have a President, we have a capo di tutti.
Don’t forget Obama also used the IRS to silence free speech by attacking critics (like me) and hundreds of others who dared criticize him. Obama even stooped so low as to persecute a Stage 4 terminal cancer victim who criticized Obamacare. Only a few days after appearing on FOX News, this cancer victim at death’s door was audited by the IRS. Coincidence? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
But that’s all child’s play. The serious dictator/gangster wants to know your deepest, darkest secrets so he can extort and blackmail you. Obama uses the IRS to uncover his opponent’s business and tax dealings. He uses the National Security Agency to listen to all our calls, emails and texts. He uses Obamacare to snoop into your medical and sexual history. Or didn’t you know Obamacare demands that your doctor ask about your sexual history? That information is now in the hands of government (aka Big Brother). Obama understands whoever has the most information is in control.
Everyone has secrets they don’t want publicly exposed, at the risk of losing your career, reputation or — worst of all — your wife and family. I believe Obama and his goons are using this information to extort and blackmail his GOP opposition.
If you don’t believe this is happening, you are naïve. This is the very point of all the three-letter government organizations: IRS, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NSA. Obama uses them as his personal army, police force and Mafia hit men.
How else can you explain John Boehner calling Obama bad names and swearing to support small government, lower taxes, less spending and reducing the debt, and then turning around days later and agreeing to a deal to increase spending and raise taxes and the debt?
How else can you explain a true-blue conservative patriot like Justice John Roberts standing in full throttle opposition to Obamacare, writing the majority Supreme Court opinion against it, striking it down, killing it, and then suddenly reversing course to join the other side and write a new majority opinion supporting and approving Obamacare?
How else can you explain Gen. David “We Never Leave Anyone Behind” Petraeus, then head of the CIA, standing silently by while his CIA operatives were murdered and left behind in Benghazi? Obama refused to send help, yet Petraeus never said a word. Why? Was he being blackmailed over an affair? Now we know he was, in fact, having an affair. But at the time, no one knew – except, of course, the government agents listening to his calls and spying on his emails. Did they use that information to blackmail him, and then hang him out to dry after the fact? Perhaps the affair was the smallest thing they had on Petraeus. Perhaps there’s much more that we’ll never know.
But everyone has secrets. Everyone does something wrong. Big Brother now knows them. And I believe they are using them to extort our politicians and military leaders.
Obama obviously has ways to control people. It takes more than wonderful speeches on teleprompter to make conservatives suddenly go against all their principals. My belief is that Obama and his Chicago hit squad has “the goods” on the opposition. They find your weakness, then hold it over your head like a sword. They’ve uncovered transgressions, corruption, insider trading, tax cheating or photos of the political opposition in bed with the wrong person. They might even offer a deal too good to refuse: Vote our way, and we’ll give you a $1 million-per-year lobbying job or law-firm partnership. Vote against us and we’ll leak your embarrassing secrets and ruin your life. There is no other common-sense explanation.
What about Obama’s executive orders, ignoring Congress and the Constitution to carry out his big government plans: to give amnesty to illegal immigrants, to use the EPA to destroy the coal industry, to stop oil drilling cold in its tracks? The list is long. Just like dictators and Mafia gangsters who couldn’t care less what laws say.
Or Obama’s henchman in the Senate, Harry Reid, dispensing with a century of tradition to allow Obama’s appointees to be approved by a simple 51-vote majority: a so-called “nuclear option.” Why? To put appointees in places of importance with such radical Marxist backgrounds they could never be approved without rigging the system.
Then there’s the military purge, about which few American’s know. Obama has fired more commanding generals in the past year, along with hundreds of junior officers on track to become generals, than any President in history. It’s a scene right out of “The Godfather,” when Al Pacino kills every opponent standing in the way of his power.
This is not a happy commentary for New Year’s. But this is the commentary America needs to hear. This is my “tough love” New Year’s gift to America. A wake-up call. A gift that just might save your life.
Wake up, America. Because by next New Year (2015), it may all be gone: our country, capitalism, Judeo-Christian values, American exceptionalism and our children’s future.
All wiped away by one man: a lying, spying, bullying tyrant in the White House.
I hope that our visitors will read and consider this.
Jimmy Smith
The truth is shocking and disturbing. The truth is we have a tyrant in the White House. His level of bullying, lying, spying, distorting, manipulating, intimidating, demonizing and using propaganda to cram his policies down our throats is unlike any President in history. His name is Barack Obama. But it might as well be some Marxist thug like Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez or the old leaders of East Germany. The result is something none of us ever imagined: America living in decline, crisis and fear.
An even better analogy is to compare Obama to Chicago’s own Al Capone. We have an organized crime gangster living in the White House who believes the ends justify the means. He’s playing the meanest, dirtiest game that has ever been played in D.C. Let me explain the tricks of the gangster’s trade and how we are being played.
First, Obama uses his army of government employees to fix elections by intimidating critics and destroying his political opposition. The Tea Parties won the 2010 elections in a historic landslide. So just like the dictator/gangster Obama is, he used the Internal Revenue Service to attack, persecute and bankrupt them. He sucked out their life, energy and enthusiasm. The result: Amid the worst economy since the Great Depression, Obama won the election with his army of government employees doing the dirty work.
And just to be sure, Obama’s loyal government employee goons in the Census Bureau created fraudulent data about jobs in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Like all organized crime, the books were cooked. And I believe the fraud continues unabated every month. The jobs reports are either outright crooked, just made up out of thin air or certainly manipulated to make it look like we have a jobs recovery. We don’t.
That’s how gangsters and tin pot dictators stay in power: through an army of brutal enforcers doing whatever it takes to keep the boss in power. We don’t have a President, we have a capo di tutti.
Don’t forget Obama also used the IRS to silence free speech by attacking critics (like me) and hundreds of others who dared criticize him. Obama even stooped so low as to persecute a Stage 4 terminal cancer victim who criticized Obamacare. Only a few days after appearing on FOX News, this cancer victim at death’s door was audited by the IRS. Coincidence? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
But that’s all child’s play. The serious dictator/gangster wants to know your deepest, darkest secrets so he can extort and blackmail you. Obama uses the IRS to uncover his opponent’s business and tax dealings. He uses the National Security Agency to listen to all our calls, emails and texts. He uses Obamacare to snoop into your medical and sexual history. Or didn’t you know Obamacare demands that your doctor ask about your sexual history? That information is now in the hands of government (aka Big Brother). Obama understands whoever has the most information is in control.
Everyone has secrets they don’t want publicly exposed, at the risk of losing your career, reputation or — worst of all — your wife and family. I believe Obama and his goons are using this information to extort and blackmail his GOP opposition.
If you don’t believe this is happening, you are naïve. This is the very point of all the three-letter government organizations: IRS, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NSA. Obama uses them as his personal army, police force and Mafia hit men.
How else can you explain John Boehner calling Obama bad names and swearing to support small government, lower taxes, less spending and reducing the debt, and then turning around days later and agreeing to a deal to increase spending and raise taxes and the debt?
How else can you explain a true-blue conservative patriot like Justice John Roberts standing in full throttle opposition to Obamacare, writing the majority Supreme Court opinion against it, striking it down, killing it, and then suddenly reversing course to join the other side and write a new majority opinion supporting and approving Obamacare?
How else can you explain Gen. David “We Never Leave Anyone Behind” Petraeus, then head of the CIA, standing silently by while his CIA operatives were murdered and left behind in Benghazi? Obama refused to send help, yet Petraeus never said a word. Why? Was he being blackmailed over an affair? Now we know he was, in fact, having an affair. But at the time, no one knew – except, of course, the government agents listening to his calls and spying on his emails. Did they use that information to blackmail him, and then hang him out to dry after the fact? Perhaps the affair was the smallest thing they had on Petraeus. Perhaps there’s much more that we’ll never know.
But everyone has secrets. Everyone does something wrong. Big Brother now knows them. And I believe they are using them to extort our politicians and military leaders.
Obama obviously has ways to control people. It takes more than wonderful speeches on teleprompter to make conservatives suddenly go against all their principals. My belief is that Obama and his Chicago hit squad has “the goods” on the opposition. They find your weakness, then hold it over your head like a sword. They’ve uncovered transgressions, corruption, insider trading, tax cheating or photos of the political opposition in bed with the wrong person. They might even offer a deal too good to refuse: Vote our way, and we’ll give you a $1 million-per-year lobbying job or law-firm partnership. Vote against us and we’ll leak your embarrassing secrets and ruin your life. There is no other common-sense explanation.
What about Obama’s executive orders, ignoring Congress and the Constitution to carry out his big government plans: to give amnesty to illegal immigrants, to use the EPA to destroy the coal industry, to stop oil drilling cold in its tracks? The list is long. Just like dictators and Mafia gangsters who couldn’t care less what laws say.
Or Obama’s henchman in the Senate, Harry Reid, dispensing with a century of tradition to allow Obama’s appointees to be approved by a simple 51-vote majority: a so-called “nuclear option.” Why? To put appointees in places of importance with such radical Marxist backgrounds they could never be approved without rigging the system.
Then there’s the military purge, about which few American’s know. Obama has fired more commanding generals in the past year, along with hundreds of junior officers on track to become generals, than any President in history. It’s a scene right out of “The Godfather,” when Al Pacino kills every opponent standing in the way of his power.
This is not a happy commentary for New Year’s. But this is the commentary America needs to hear. This is my “tough love” New Year’s gift to America. A wake-up call. A gift that just might save your life.
Wake up, America. Because by next New Year (2015), it may all be gone: our country, capitalism, Judeo-Christian values, American exceptionalism and our children’s future.
All wiped away by one man: a lying, spying, bullying tyrant in the White House.
I hope that our visitors will read and consider this.
Jimmy Smith
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