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4A ♦ TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2006 HrWstan .ljuimtal OPINION Daniel F. Evans Editor and Publisher Julie B. Evans Vice President Don Moncrief Foy S. Evans Managing Editor Editor Emeritus Letters to toe Editor Brown website changes I would like to take this opportunity to share some post-election thoughts with my fellow citizens in Houston County, and to invite all of you to visit brownonboard. com in the upcoming weeks. Brownonboard will undergo some changes. It will be a local knowledge seeking tool to help folks stay informed as to what we are doing in Houston County regarding our children’s education. Please know this, the election is not the end of my journey of advocacy for our children, parents, teach ers and community. I will continue to ask the “tough questions” and seek knowledge through the Board of Education meetings, School Council meetings, PTSA and PTO meetings and one of my favorites, the Georgia PTA website. I will share my findings with you through brownon board.com, and I would like to encourage you to share your thoughts with me as well. Since the election, I have learned that some of you endured as much as three hours of standing in line to cast your vote for me and other key candidates who have a direct impact on our families’ quality of life in Central Georgia. Such unselfish acts fill my entire being with a sense of camaraderie and an overwhelming sense of community pride. I consider it an honor to be a part of your world. Today, I am more confident than ever that the students, parents, teachers and neighbors in our communities are capable of delivering feedback to the process, which ultimately affects our children’s academic progress and outcome. We simply need to be given the opportunity to do our part. I would like the community to know, I will not allow your vote/voice to be dismissed, nor will it be in vain. We may be a system of plurality, but in America we value autonomy as well. Thank You for your kind words, prayers, support, and encouragement, We Will Make a Difference! I promise! Kathy Brown, Warner Robins More govenment coming Democrats are justified in celebrating their vic tories in the national elections. However, one won ders what they will get for their efforts. Consider what Republican victories meant to Republicans. Republicans generally value less government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes and a strong national defense. For the past six years, they received: More government; spending that would make a drunken Democrat proud; and a national defense policy that includes the refusal to protect our nation’s borders and the refusal to enforce our immigration laws. Excuse me, but wouldn’t the failure of a President to enforce our nation’s laws be an impeachable offense? (Sorry to mention that, but I felt I could get away with it as I am considered a Republican). Democrats generally love to expand government, support raising the minimum wage, want a nationalized health care system to insure all citizens, and job protections. Let’s see what they get when their party is in power. For the first two years of the Clinton administration they owned both houses of congress and at the begin ning of those two years 43 million Americans were without healthcare. After those two years, 43 million Americans were without healthcare. Later, they got welfare reform that took millions off the public dole; they got GATT and the WTO which escalated the export of American manufacturing jobs overseas. Does it sound like Democrats received what they wanted? In the final analysis, what a party espouses as its guiding principles and what it actually accomplishes are two entire ly different things. And, after awhile in office, the incum bents forget any allegiance to party values and remember only your name, address and phone number for fundrais ing purposes. Public service seems to be very addictive. In the final analysis, term limits gives meaning to public service. But, don’t hold your breath waiting for office holders voting to end their grasp on your wallets and purses, you’ll pass out. David E. Wittenberg, Kathleen Out of the wilderness After 12 years in the wilderness, the Democratic party is going to have a chance to make America a better place for all! This means tax breaks for the middle class and our poorest citizens and the end of huge tax subsidies for our richest one per cent and our oil companies. Our national parks and our environment will be safer. Our air will become cleaner. Detroit will build cars that get more miles per gallon and are safer to drive. Pentagon waste will no longer prevail. The Bill of Rights will be enforced and all Americans will feel better about them selves. Lobbyists will no longer rule over Congress. The list is endless! Frank W. Gadbois, Warner Robins HOW TO SUBMIT LETTERS We encourage readers to submit letters to the editor. Letters should not exceed 350 words and must include the writer’s name, address and telephone number. All letters printed in The Daily Journal will appear with the writer’s name and hometown - we do not publish anonymous letters. The news paper reserves the right to edit or reject letters for reasons of grammar, punctuation, taste and brevity. Letter writers are asked to submit no more than one letter per person per week. We cannot guarantee that a letter will be printed on a specific date. The Daily Journal prefers that letters be typed. Letters to the editor are published in the order they are received as space permits. There are three ways to submit a letter to the editor: E-mail it to hhj@evansnewspapers.com, mail it to The Houston Daily Journal at P.O. Box 1910, Perry, GA 31069, or drop it off at 1210 Washington St. in Perry - between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Belvidere favors Republicans BELVIDERE, N.C. - Republicans took a beating here in North Carolina last Tuesday in a state where they have been making big inroads. Not this time. They were almost wiped out. But here in Belvidere in Perquimans County things are different. My nephew is active in Republican politics, a coun ty that stands out like a sore thumb. Though a small county, Republicans did all right. Unlike Georgia, where Republicans have practically taken over state gov ernment, North Carolina is showing signs of being a Democratic bastion. So much for politics. I am in a small community, somewhat isolated, and I’ll have to return home to learn what really happened Tuesday. Folks up here just aren’t interested in what goes on in Middle Georgia, so information from home is scarce. Imagine being in a area where your cell phone can pick up a signal only once in a while and you can’t remem ber your password to get into Cox.net to receive your e-mail. ■ ■■ Cotton is king once again up here. It used to be peanuts, but the federal government’s actions concerning pea nut allotments changed the dynamics of farming here. Now you see field after field of cotton, some of it already picked, some of it waiting for the cot ton picking machine to come along. "...I know just how you feel," ,jjk ! Sp^ w W m 'Wt Bush's real plan lor dealing with Iraq A mid the debris of the Republicans’ /\ loss of Congress and the second- political explosion of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resigna tion, there is other, perhaps even big ger news. Not to understate the obvious: As President Bush put it in his Texas vernacular, the Democrats put a “thumpin’” on the GOP in Tuesday’s midterm elections. But reporters quizzing the president on Wednesday about the election results and about Rumsfeld - Had Bush been untruthful when he said recently that Rumsfeld was going to stay? - seemed to be missing the broader, deeper point at which the president was hinting. It’s an open secret among politi cal in-the-knows that those closest to former President George H. W. Bush - and perhaps the elder Bush himself - are getting more and more disturbed about Iraq. They weren’t for going there in the first place. Now their urgency has intensified. They believe “staying the course” is a course of destruc tion for the current President Bush, his Republican Party and the nation. These behind-the-scenes actors can no longer contain their instincts to pro tect all three. Recent media reports have brought to light fresh concerns about the White House and Iraq by James Baker, the elder Bush’s top confidante. Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton are spearheading a study group tasked with finding realistic, expedited strate gies for getting out of Iraq. It’s painfully clear that whatever recommendations they conjure will be warmly received at the White House. President Bush several times refer enced the group’s work at his post-elec tion press conference. Another telling appointment is that OPINION This is the first time cotton in some fields has been picked by machine. We are in a fertile agricultural area close to Albemarle Sound. The Perquimans River sort of wraps itself around the county seat of Hertford and where in staying backs up to the river. I am staying in a beautiful old home that was built in 1860. There are other homes in the area dating back to the 1800 s, including one on which a sub stantial sum of money has been spent restoring it and turning it into a fine restaurant.A restaurant way out here in the country, in a village of a few hundred people? Yes. And it is doing well, which reinforces the observation that if you build a better mousetrap they will come. It is so different here than at home I have trouble absorbing it. There is one gas station/store, which proudly calls itself a super market. To the few hundred people living within driving range it might as well be a super market, because it provides them with essentials they otherwise would have to travel about 10 miles to get. Matt Towery Columnist Morris News Service of Bob Gates as the new Secretary of Defense. He’s known in Washington circles as a pragmatist who’s unlikely to be blinded by the idea that current strategy in Iraq is unalterable. Gates is president of Texas A&M University, where George H. W. Bush’s library is located. Like the former pres ident, Gates once headed up the CIA. So all the evidence points to a “higher power” that has now stuck its substan tial nose into the affairs of the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. Look for it to provide not only guid ance, but political cover for what’s going to be more than just a tactical adjustment to the U.S. approach in Iraq. This won’t mean abandoning the region. It can’t. The chaos that would fol low in Iraq and in the Middle East would raise a stench that would even tually drift across the ocean and find us. Terrorists would launch new and improved destructive capabilities if left in possession of the desert field. What it will likely mean is a redraw ing of strategy to concentrate on forcing the reluctant Iraqi government to gov ern, and on curtailing our involvement enough to signal Iraqis and Americans that our presence there isn’t open ended. Did President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and others have blinders on when shown the public opinion polls that indicated the Republicans were about Foy Evans Columnist loyevansl9@cox.net JL HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL ■ ■■ Today I learned that a beautiful, exclusive gated community of expen sive homes has been developed on Albemarle Sound in what I would have believed to be a most improbable place. The homes are large and expensive. Many of them look out over Albemarle Sound. Others surround a beautiful golf course. In an isolated area, miles from shopping and other amenities, it is nourishing and is having a big impact on the makeup of the population in the county, which many contribute to the fact the county is leaning Republican in some races. I find myself wondering where people come from and why they will settle, even in such an outstanding development. It probably goes back to the fact that wherever there is water people will pay high prices to be on it or near it. Back in Georgia, for example, look at land values on Lake Oconee, Lake Sinclair and Lake Blackshear. The lure of water seems to be overwhelming. It certainly seduces people into reaching into their pockets and turning loose of money for homes they often probably would not want to live in back home. ■ ■■ For me, it is back home soon. It has been an important trip, but not for fun. It had to be important, because I like to sleep in my own bed too much otherwise. to get skunked in the elections? Who knows? What can be known is the certainty that both President Bushes - 41 and 43 - gained before the election that some thing with American foreign policy had to give, and soon. What “gave” was the roof on the Republican House and possibly the Senate, as well as the one over Don Rumsfeld’s head. What might have been gained is the critical insight that America can leave Iraq sooner rather than later, and without leaving it completely naked to face an enemy clothed by Iran. Now the question looms: If exiting Iraq is possible now, wasn’t it also possible months ago, when the GOP’s political grave hadn’t yet been dug? As crucial as that question is, it’s only a rhetorical one now. More to the point, it’s now plain that the elders of the Bush dynasty have stuck their boots in the muck created by the cur rent president’s commitment in Iraq. They want to end George W Bush’s Vietnam, not by giving in, but by reducing America’s role and, by that, soon ending American casualties. Rumsfeld was about brawn. Gates is about brains. Considering Tuesday’s elections, a little more gray matter might be in order to fix what’s the mat ter in Iraq. Matt Towery served as the chairman of former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s political organization from 1992 until Gingrich left Congress. He is a former Georgia state representative, the author of several books and currently heads the polling and political information firm Insider Advantage. To find out more about Matthew Towery and read fea tures by other Creators Syndicate writ ers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web site at www.creators, com.