About Dawson County news. (Dawsonville, Georgia) 2015-current | View Entire Issue (March 4, 2020)
PAGE 7 A Send a letter to the editor to P.O. Box 1600, Dawsonville, GA 30534; fax (706) 265-3276; or email to editor@dawsonnews.com. DawsonOpinion WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2020 This is a page of opinion — ours, yours and others. Signed columns and cartoons are the opinions of the writers and artists, and they may not reflect our views. GOP campaign slamming Collins could backfire DICKYARBROUGH Columnist What a differ ence a decision makes. Wasn’t it just the other day that Georgia Republican Congressman Doug Collins of Gainesville, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, was the hero of the hour for his unwavering defense of President Donald Trump during his Kangaroo Court impeach ment trial? Now we are being told that he is just another tax-and-spend Washington politi cian, soft on crime and good buddies with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. What in the world has happened? It seems Collins has had the temerity to say he intends to run for Johnny Isakson’s seat in the United States Senate, currently held by Gov. Brian Kemp’s appointee, Kelly Loeffler. He must have a pretty good chance of winning because Club for Growth, a Washington-based group, is spending rough ly $3 million trying to disparage him and his record in Washington. David McIntosh, the club’s president, said in a statement that “Club for Growth will educate Georgia voters about Doug Collins’ record on economic issues and demand that he change his ways.” Oh, please. He must think folks here in Georgia are dumb as rocks and need some Washington special- interest group to tell us how to think. I don’t know Doug Collins personally. I met him once at a speech to the Gainesville Kiwanis Club and, as I recall, he is a chap lain and a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve Command and was deployed to Iraq for a period of time. Even though I wowed the crowd that day with my usual dazzling wit and wisdom, I have a feeling he wouldn’t remember me from a tree stump. Politicians being politicians, maybe Congressman Collins thought his defense of the president would be the ticket to getting him Trump’s endorsement for the Senate seat. After all, polls say that the president enjoys the approval of more than 90% of Georgia Republicans. But it didn’t happen. Despite being lobbied by Mr. Trump, Gov. Kemp appointed Loeffler instead. The consensus of political navel-gazers is that Loeffler’s appointment is an attempt to broaden the party’s appeal with suburban women who are being heavily courted by the Democrats. This is a critically important constituency since Georgia voters will cast ballots for both of the state’s Senate seats in November — Sen. David Perdue is also up for reelection — and Democrats expect to be competitive. The fact that reports say Loeffler is willing to spend $20 million of her own money on her campaign doesn’t hurt. I am grieved to report that Gov. Kemp, following the lead of several of his predeces sors, didn’t seek my counsel before making his appointment. If he had, I would have cautioned him that We the Unwashed are the final decision-makers on who represents us in Washington, not political insiders. Just ask Jimmy Carter. When Sen. Richard Russell died in 1971, Gov. Carter appointed his buddy David Gambrell, a political novice like Loeffler, to fill the seat. Gambrell hardly got the seat warm before he was ousted in the next election by a little- known state representative from Perry named Sam Nunn. The same thing could happen to Loeffler. As for appealing to sub urban women, I know a bunch of them and I have yet to have one tell me they identify with a zillionaire who owns a women’s bas ketball team, has her own private jet and lives in a $10.5 million, 15,000-square-foot house in Atlanta. Maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd of suburban women. About owning a basketball team, Jim Galloway, the respected political observer for the Atlanta newspaper, says “the WNBA has a history of appealing to black and LGBTQ fans, both groups far from Trump’s base. Plus, the league has a reputation for supporting progressive causes like a 2018 initiative that allowed fans to donate a por tion of ticket sales to Planned Parenthood, an abortion rights group.” That could be a problem for Loeffler. Remember that Jimmy Carter in his shame ful racist campaign for governor in 1970 had pictures circulated to rednecks around the state showing his opponent, Carl Sanders, at the time a co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks, with his arm around Bill Bridges, a black basketball player. Sadly, it seemed to have worked. Meanwhile, I have a feeling the Republican establishment’s ham-handed smear campaign against Doug Collins is going to backfire. I don’t know about you, but the more I see of it, the more I say: Run, Doug, ran. You can reach Dick Yarbrough atdick@dick- yarbrough.com; at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA 31139; online atdickyarbrough.com or on Facebook at wvwv.facebook.com/dickyarb. "Oh, look. The government is finally releasing the hurricane relief funds." Lessons from the pogo stick Sometimes, I am amazed I made it through my childhood without any bro ken bones. Maybe it was because my clumsy and awk ward self was well padded with a layer of chubbiness to cush ion the falls. I desperately wanted to take ballet, longing to be lithe and graceful. Mama, always eager to crush any dreams that didn’t involve law school even at an early age, reminded me I was doing good to balance on my feet, let alone my toes. She also mentioned something about gravity and how it was not my friend. I moved on to music, some thing my poor piano teacher had to suffer through for eight years until I realized I had zero talent. I’m sure she realized it after the third lesson. But in between the ballet and the piano, I thought I was going to be a basketball player. I talked about it and talked about it - my then barely 5 foot self was going to be a female basketball star. Until my grandfather put a basketball hoop up above my playhouse. “What’s that?” I asked. “Your hoop,” he stated mat- ter-of-factly. And out of nowhere, he tossed me a ball. “Have fun, Lil’Un.” It was not fun though. Usually, the ball would bounce back and hit me in the face. Mama didn’t want me to be on any kind of team - nope, that meant I’d have to go to away games and Mama was not having that. She truly had nothing to worry about however. But Mama has always had that annoying trait that made her think if I started something, I needed to finish it, or at the very least, try until I was exhausted. She wanted to instill some follow through in me, and if I was going to quit, I needed to form an educated decision as to why I wasn’t going to do it, like proving I was a hopeless cause. “I am horrible at basketball,” I whined. Mama couldn’t argue that point. “I need something though,” I declared. “Like what?” she asked. Problem was, I didn’t know. I wanted to do something new and had some crazy notion it shouldn’t involve reading a book as an added change. So, what did my family do? They went and got me a pogo stick. A death weapon on springs for an awkward, clumsy, chub by kid. Child Protective Services apparently let kids get on these things and bounce around the yard on them, just as readily as they let us fling ourselves off of trampolines without nets in the ‘80s. I was terrified of the thing. “Try it out,” my grandfather encouraged. “I don’t know how it works,” I said. “It’s easy,” he said. “Just hop on it and hold on.” I wasn’t so sure about this. Keep in mind, I was as round as I was tall. My uncle decided to hop on to give me a demonstration. It looked easy enough, or at least my uncle made it look easy. He po’ed and go’ed around the back yard effortless ly. I got on and off I went, into the grass and dirt. “Try it again,” my grandfa ther encouraged. “I think I am done,” I said, brushing pebbles off my knee. “You’ve only done it once,” he said. “You haven’t done it enough to know whether you’re done or not.” So, I tried it about four more times. Each attempt had the same result, with me ending up in the grass. It could have been worse if I had actually tried to pogo around the yard. This was just me put ting my feet on the pedals and then promptly falling over because I could not balance. My foray into the world of being a pogo athlete, if that’s such a thing, taught me some valuable lessons. When you fall, you get back up. Tailing at something doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It just means you aren’t good at that particular thing. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We can’t all be good at the same things. We can’t all be the star; we can’t all be the one that makes the big win or is the top dog. A lot of people don’t learn from the winning either. It’s from failing - and sometimes hard - that we learn the most grace and how to make it in life. I also learned that apparently men don’t factor safety into buying toys for kids. When my grandmother and mother found out about the pogo stick, they both had indi vidual and combined hissie fits. “What in the devil were you thinking?” seemed to be the resounding question they both asked. “Do you even know your grandchild at all?” was the next question, followed by com ments about how I often fell down the back doorsteps at least twice a week and wasn’t there a weight limit on pogo sticks. My grandfather and uncle took the criticism quietly. They thought they were helping but quickly discovered just giving me a book and a Twinkie was about all the adventure I could handle. I never did have any athletic prowess or learn how to play musical instrument very well. My greatest lesson out of all of it though? Just because you see someone else doing it and they make it look easy, doesn’t mean it is. Sudie Crouch is an award winning humor columnist and author of the recently e-pub- lished novel, "The Dahlman Files: ATony Dahlman Paranormal Mystery." SUDIE CROUCH Columnist LETTER TO THE EDITOR Is climate change really a problem? Is climate change really a problem? After all the climate on this planet is always changing. In fact, over the billions or years we have had this Earth we have gone from Ice Age to hot and in between! This is true, but the facts are that these changes usually take hundreds of thou sands of years. In addition, scientists have said through research that we now have the highest amount of C02 in our atmosphere than ever before. And this increase in C02 has taken only 120 years instead of hundreds of thousands of years. Scientists, medical professionals, and business leaders are warning us that we must act soon or the effects of climate change will be unstoppable. In fact, human life as we know it could be threat ened by climate change, economists at JP Morgan have warned in a hard-hitting report on the “catastrophic” potential of climate change. In an alarming document sent to clients, they said that deaths, immigration and conflicts will soar as the planet heats and water supplies dry up. Lamines will increase and species will be wiped out. The impact of climate change has been massively underestimated, they said, and all this will have a devastating impact on economic growth and the stock mar ket. The economists call on world leaders to introduce a global carbon tax to prevent a meltdown, saying no other measure is likely to be enough. But there are things we can do our selves to cut carbon emissions. Lirst be aware of your carbon footprint and do things like turning off lights, lowering the thermostat, driving less, buying an electric car and many other things listed on our North Georgia Conservation Coalition check list. But also, be aware that your elected officials must make laws that help us to cut carbon emissions. Unfortunately, many are ruled by the fos sil fuel companies because they give them money to get re-elected. Ask your candidates what their stand is on climate change. If they say it is not a problem, then don’t vote for them. The planet and your children’s lives depend on you. Virginia Matteson Dawsonville The Flu 98 years ago, my future life hung in the balance as my grandfather sickened and almost died while in the Army. He got the Spanish Flu, an H1N1 virus that killed as many as 100 million people worldwide. In the U.S. about 30% of the population got the flu and over 500,000 people died. Grandpa lived but the flu killed a lot of people mostly young adults in their prime. If you study any history, you learn pret ty quick that sickness always kills more people than war. I walk on ground every day here in north Georgia that contains millions of graves of the mound builder Indians that lived here before the Cherokees. Desoto wandered through the Etowah River valley with his troops and a hog herd. They carried European diseases that spread through the Indian tribes and darn near killed every one of those Indians. Once we connected all the people of the world together with ships after Columbus, not only did people move about but plants, animals and little tiny critters found new homes everywhere. So did the germs. We homogenized the world. Some of that exchange improved the lives of humans like say potatoes. Some did not, like smallpox and malaria. Once we got good planes, we have almost instant worldwide mixing of every new bug throughout the human family. The ancient response of blockade and quarantine to disease does not work so well, try as we might. The only reason that the Spanish Flu did not kill twice as many, according to germ experts, is because it mutated into something less lethal. Keep in mind that sometimes mutation moves the other way and things get a lot more dangerous. This Coronavirus could be a huge killer or maybe just another flu without much impact. We really do not know yet. So here is what we need to do. Do not keep hogs and chickens in your bedroom, keep them out in the bam. Do not shake hands or hug everyone you see. Wash your hands with soap and water a lot. Do not kiss a lot of people just for fun. Avoid big crowds indoors in the winter time. You have done just about all you can do. Maybe I will be tough like my grand father but you never know. Gary Pichon Marble Hill
