Newspaper Page Text
Page 24 October 15, 2023 StarNews www.starnewsgaonline.com
Commentary
Considering our current political class, are you competent to vote?
Constitution concerning who can vote. Name
two.
C. ED
Thoughts
While Shaving
cedwilson587@yahoo.com
Like most of us, you are a U.S. Citizen by
the grace of God: you were bom here. What if
you had to take a “United States Citizenship
Test before you could vote? Try a few
questions:
1. Name one of the five rights granted by
the First Amendment to our Constitution.
2. Name one of the three rights provided by
our “Declaration of Independence”.
3. How many senators are there in the
Senate and how many representatives vote in
the House of Representatives?
4. Who becomes President if neither the
President nor Vice-President can serve?
5. There are four amendments to the
6. Name one responsibility that is only
available to a United States citizen. Name two
rights available to everyone living in the
United States.
7. Who wrote The Declaration of
Independence and when was it adopted”
8. Name three of the original thirteen origi
nal states.
9. Name one war fought by the United
States in the 1800s. (Surely, you remember the
war of 1812!)
10. How many states border Canada; how
many states border Mexico?
You did not do too well, did you? Neither
did I. Answers can be found in a PDF copy of
the 2022 United States Citizenship Test. Print
one. The Wall Street Journal says we have two
political parties, one stupid and one evil. Do
you support the EVIL one or the STUPID one?
Now, what do you really know about the
current federal administration? Most of you are
paying the bills. Biden and Harris were elected,
by most accounts, by a majority of the votes
cast.
So how many Cabinet members does
President Biden have? Less than 20 or more
than 20? Exactly how many? Would you
believe that as of September 2023 there were
25 members of the President’s Cabinet? Can
you name three? Would you loan money to or
buy a used car from any of them? Where did
these people come from? Do you think that
these 25 people could agree on anything except
that they want more money?! You are paying
the bills.
Given that the Afghanistan War lasted some
20 years under four U.S. presidents; cost thou
sands of lives on both sides and billions of tax
payer dollars to replace the Taliban when we
went in with the Taliban; and given that Biden
bailed out leaving billions of dollars of our best
equipment and 13 American dead at the airport,
who won??
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
more than one in five families (21.1%) receive
government means tested assistance. Are you
part of the 79% who pay for that “assistance”?
Tmmp and 18 others have been indicted by
the Fulton County District Attorney and based
upon the jury pool some or all will likely be
convicted. Ex-President Tmmp may well serve
a mandatory prison term. Question: With more
than 10,000 people in the Fulton County jail
awaiting a hearing, why are those Fulton
county residents not more worthy of the Fulton
county DA’s attention? Is this about “justice”
or is it about the D.A.’s political ambitions?
Now, are things really that bad? Consider:
Year 536 and for about 100 years thereafter:
Volcanic emptions in Iceland threw a giant ash
cloud into the sky and crops died everywhere
from Europe to Latin America. It was the 10
coldest years on record. In 541, the Justinian
plague arrived in Egypt.
Between 541 and 549: 5,000 people died
daily in Constantinople. These diseases and
famines resulted in political changes that
resulted in the deaths of an additional unknown
number of people.
Year 1347: the Justinian (Bubonic) Plague
killed an estimated 60% of the European popu
lation. It has never really ended, just controlled.
See ED WILSON page 27
The Trembling River
Sybil
ROSEN
THOMAS
River Rambles
syllabil 17@aol.com
ago in this column I wrote
about the death of my friend Mary B and how
she described the journey of her dying from
ALS as being carried on a “river of letting go.”
A few weeks before her passing, Mary B sent a
farewell letter to her friends, along with the
poem “Fear” by Kahlil Gibran, author of “The
Prophet,” the celebrated Lebanon-born poet
who died in New York City in 1931.
It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and
villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear
fore\>er.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.
Mary B’s river of letting go carried her into
an ocean, too, that vast shoreless sea we often
evoke in our efforts to comprehend the myster
ies of death. The inclusion of this poem with
her good-bye said so much about my friend’s
final path: her fear and acceptance and, most of
all, her courage. Gibran’s words comforted me
and others too, as was her intention; it told me
she’d realized what she needed in order to be at
peace.
By sharing Gibran’s poem, Mary B once
again reminded me that rivers and oceans have
had long lives as metaphors. We are drawn to
these expressions because they reflect both our
external life and our inner one, giving image
and shape to ineffable aspects of interior
worlds. Particularly when called upon - as we
all will be - to navigate the arduous pathway
between life and death. Metaphors from nature
are bridges to the unknowable, and in this way
the unthinkable can become imaginable, and
therefore accessible.
I was pleased to see the poet also thinks of
rivers as feminine, using the ‘she’ pronoun.
He’s willing to be unabashedly anthropomor
phic - or gynecamorphic as my fellow writer
Bill Bouris once suggested - in describing a
river that “trembles with fear.” Now anyone
who’s been in a canoe on choppy waters knows
that rivers tremble. Yet, by assigning human
emotion to water’s behavior, Gibran goes a step
further and assumes the river has a certain con
sciousness, an awareness of experience, a
knowledge of where she’s been and where
she’s going. By beginning the poem with, “It is
said,” he suggests up front that these ideas are
rooted in the realm of story and legend.
Still, it’s here the poet and I part company.
With all due respect to him and Mary B, I think
it possible my friend might even agree with me
on this next point. It’s not that I don’t appreci
ate Gibran’s work and the wisdom he offers,
it’s just that I have a hard time picturing a river
as fearful. I base this on long observation of the
Chattahoochee, a river that passes by my win
dow at every moment - and I will tell you she
feels anything but hesitant. Rather, she seems
eager to make her way to the sea.
And why not? By the time the
Chattahoochee River empties into Lake
Seminole, a reservoir on the Georgia-Florida
border, she’s drained more than 8770 square
miles of watershed basin, receiving volumes of
water from hundreds of smaller tributaries such
as Carroll County’s Snake and Whooping
Creeks and many more nameless streams like
the one in the floodplain below the cabin.
Perhaps it’s Lake Seminole that “trembles
with fear.” Thirty-five miles long and two
See RIVER RAMBLES page 27
Some months
Missing: a correction
D.A.
KING
PRESIDENT
The Dustin
Inman Society
404-316-6712
In addition to being grateful to
editor/publisher Sue Horn for the space to
write here about illegal immigration in
Georgia, I am also a Star News reader. As
such, it seems there was something glaringly
absent from the previous three editions of this
newspaper. I am very curious to know if other
readers agree. I was looking for and expected
a correction from State Senator Mike Dugan.
Was anyone else?
In the June edition of Star News, I wrote
about a Democrat bill pending under the Gold
Dome that deals with changing a law that
effects tuition costs in our public-funded
colleges and the definition of “resident” used
to determine eligibility for instate tuition. SB
264 is a Democrat bill on which Senator
Dugan is the number one cosponsor. The
on false information on legislation from Senator Dugan
headline over my column then was “SB 264:
Americans last college tuition legislation”
which reflects my view of the bill. My
experienced opinion is based on the language in
the legislation and understanding what would
happen if it became law.
Here is that exact wording with my own
emphasis on what I regard as the “Americans
last” part: “noncitizen students admitted to the
United States as refugees pursuant to 8 U.S.C.
Section 1157; as special immigrants pursuant
to Public Law 110-181, Section 1244, as
amended, Public Law 109-163, Section 1059,
as amended, or Section 602(b) of Title VI of
Division F of Public Law 111-8, as amended;
or as humanitarian parolees pursuant to 8
U.S.C. Section 1182(d)(5)(A) shall be classified
as in-state for tuition purposes immediately
upon settlement in Georgia; provided, ...”
Simply put for people who don’t read and
work with state legislation on a regular basis,
SB 264 says that “special immigrants” (known
as “SIVs”) and otherwise illegal aliens who are
granted Biden’s ‘humanitarian parole’ to legally
enter the U.S. could migrate to Georgia and be
eligible for the much lower instate tuition rate
in our public colleges the same day they arrive.
The bill would alter current state law that
requires all new Georgia residents to live here
for a year before they are allowed to access the
instate tuition rate. That “all” description
includes the above foreigners as well as
Americans who move here from other states.
The current instate tuition at State University
of West Georgia is $2,732 (15+ hours). The
current out-of-state tuition is $9,641 (15+
hours) per semester (westga.edu).
As I wrote, SB 264 does not change the tact
that an American student from Michigan (for
example) would still have to wait twelve
months to qualify for the lower tuition while it
allows a new student from Afghanistan to
qualify upon arrival.
Sue Horn, the Star News editor, quite
correctly passed my column on to Sen. Dugan
before the June edition deadline so that he
would have the opportunity to respond to my
opinion of the bill on which he is a cosponsor
in the same (June) edition. His reply ran
directly below my space. But it was full of
numerous obvious, easily refuted inaccuracies.
Just two examples:
- Sen. Dugan told readers here that the bill
“.. .never even got a committee hearing...” The
fact is that I watched the Senate Higher
Education Committee hearing on SB 264 on
March 16, 2023. There was no vote. I posted a
link to that meeting with a video of the hearing
and a transcript of the proceedings on my
website.
- Sen. Dugan also told readers - and
constituents - that “the language in SB 264
already exists in Georgia law with the
exception of the term ‘Special Immigrants.” It
doesn’t. Again, SB 264 eliminates the existing
law that says the Special Immigrants and
humanitarian parolees must live here a year
before qualifying for instate tuition - just like
Americans do.
The July Star News edition contained my
point-by-point explanation of those false
statements along with references and citations
that illustrate the tmth. Ms. Horn headlined it:
“Pending legislation creates a benefit and
significant monetary savings for foreign
nationals that is not available to Americans.”
Readers who want to review this can access
these columns on ImmigrationPoliticsGA.com
by entering “Mike Dugan” in the search bar.
Please be reminded that despite what Senator
See D.A. KING page 31