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.

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.

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?”

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 PRAYER OF ST, FRANCIS

LORD MAKE ME AN INSTRUMENT OF YOUR PEACE.

WHERE THERE IS HATRED, LET ME SOW LOVE.

WHERE THERE IS INJURY, PARDON.

WHERE THERE IS DOUBT, FAITH.

WHERE THERE IS DESPAIR, HOPE.

WHERE THERE IS DARKNESS, LIGHT.

AND WHERE THERE IS SADNESS, JOY.


OH DIVINE MASTER GRANT,

THAT I MAY NOT SO MUCH SEEK TO BE CONSOLED, AS TO CONSOLE. 

TO BE UNDERSTOOD, AS TO UNDERSTAND.

TO BE LOVED, AS TO LOVE.

FOR IT IS IN GIVING, THAT WE RECEIVE.

IT IS IN PARDONING, THAT WE ARE PARDONED.

AND IT IS IN DYING, THAT WE ARE BORN TO ETERNAL LIFE. 



I would like to recommend to any that might view this to consider learning to recite this prayer every morning and make a new year's resolution to do it every day from now on.

From personal experience I know it will make you feel better.

HAPPY  NEW YEAR
JIMMY SMITH
12-31-2013

NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS.

I composed this in the form of a letter to the editor, a couple of years ago. The content is timely now again.

As we come to the end of yet another year it is time to prepare New Years resolutions. It has long been my custom to make resolutions for the beginning of a new year.  In the next few days I will make my resolutions for the arrival of 2014.

In 2011 just a few days into the year we lost Mrs. Faye Darsey and her death touched me deep within my heart. When she died I had already made my resolutions for the year. It was with Mrs. Darsey in mind that I added another resolution during the spring of 2011.

I don't recall exactly when it was but I know it was only a few weeks after Mrs. Darsey's passing when I was informed at breakfast that I had spoken horrible language in my sleep during the night. I've always talked  in my sleep and I'm known to use colorful language to put it mildly.

This particular beautiful spring morning I was told "last night you used the F word again repeatedly". There had been other mornings that I'd been told this and each time it made me feel terrible. This particular morning after being told about my language and how bad it sounded my thoughts went to my beloved high school English teacher Mrs. Darsey. As I returned to the breakfast table with my after breakfast cup of coffee I sat silently thinking about my language. As i stared into my cup I slowly thought of times before ever having heard that word spoken aloud. I eventually drifted into thought about speaking properly and naturally my thought turned to Mrs. Darsey. I sat there for a long time that morning and finally I came to think about how glad I was that I had never talked like that in the presence of my Mother or Mrs. Darsey.

My Father used profanity frequently but in all of his life I never heard the F word pass his lips. That word was not spoken much when I was a teenager or in my early adult years. In fact it was not spoken much in mixed company until the mid to late seventies. Nowadays you even hear otherwise nice ladies speak the very foul word.

The F word is not an adjective or adverb as it is so often used. It also seems to be used in every other "word form" imaginable. In fact, I now notice how frequently it is used by so many people and it is a reflection of our loss of pride of proper speech.

Well back to that spring day I was later that afternoon talking with my young cousin when I let the F word slip and instantly I paused and thought of the conversation at breakfast. Then and there I vowed to cease using the word. I explained to my cousin that I had used the word repeatedly in my sleep the night before.
I further declared right then that as a tribute to Mrs. Darsey I would not use that word out of context anymore.

I have since then decided to make it a tribute to all those who taught us at the old Bradwell Institute campus on Washington Avenue. Those of us who were fortunate enough to have been schooled there were truly blessed.We were taught how to read and write and speak as well.

Now and into the future I propose that we all consider how we have become lazy with our speech in conversation with others

I want to take this opportunity to ask all who might read this to join me in this resolve to make the future better than the present.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.

Sincerely

Jimmy Smith
December 10, 2013