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DawsonOpinion
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2021
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.
Thoughts on
random topics
in the news
February is Black History Month. I wonder if
there will be any recognition of the accomplish
ments of Condoleezza
Rice, the first Black
female secretary of state
and the first woman to
serve as National
Security Advisor, or
U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Clarence
Thomas, of Pin Point,
Georgia, or renowned
neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson, former
secretary of housing and urban development in
the Trump Administration or Colin Powell, for
mer chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the first Black secretary of state. Probably not.
Although all came from modest backgrounds,
fought bigotry and attained national promi
nence, they are all Republicans. I don’t think
they will make the cut.
The Atlanta Newspapers recently identified
the highest-paid state employees in Georgia for
fiscal year 2021. Topping the list is University
of Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart,
who made $6.7 million. That was before win
ning the National College Football
Championship. Word is that his salary will soon
be upped to somewhere around $10 million
annually. By contrast, Gov. Brian Kemp’s
annual salary is $175,000. Smart makes that
much in ten days. It reminds me of New York
Yankee slugger Babe Ruth’s comments when
told he made more money than the President of
the United States. He replied, ‘Why not? I had
a better year than he did.”
On the other hand, the second, third and
fourth highest-paid employees in Georgia were
Georgia Tech head football coach Geoff Collins
($3.52 million), UGA head basketball coach
Tom Crean ($3.2 million) and Josh Pastner,
Georgia Tech head basketball coach ($2 mil
lion). Even beleaguered Georgia Secretary of
State Brad Raffensperger ($124,000) has had a
better year than those three.
The Winter Olympics are here, in case you
were wondering. They are being held in China,
in case you care. If anyone thinks having the
Olympics in that totalitarian state is going to
make a particle of difference in their attitude, I
have a slightly used Wuhan bat I will sell you.
Sometimes, legislators just have too much
time on their hands. Witness state Sen. Frank
Ginn, R-Danielsville, who is trying to get legis
lation passed to let drivers handle their cell
phones while stopped at a light or at a stop sign.
(As if they aren’t already doingthat.) Ginn says
allowing drivers to legally hold their phones
would allow them to keep their heads up while
they scroll their phone and more easily see the
light change and then move promptly. That is
opposed to paying attention without your
phone, seeing the light change and then moving
promptly when it does. Chances of this inane
piece of legislation passing are about as good as
my being invited to dance with the Bolshoi
Ballet.
I am sure you remember the young white
man, Nicholas Sandmann, of Covington, KY,
who was vilified in the national media, on
social media and by liberal weenies world
wide in January 2019 for his racist acts at the
Lincoln Memorial, following a Make America
Great Again rally. It seems he and his friends
were taunting a Native American activist and
others that day. Even his Catholic School and
the Covington Diocese condemned the
group’s behavior. Oops! Later videos showed
it was a group called the Black Hebrew
Israelites and their tom-tom beating buddy
slinging the racial and homophobic slurs, not
the kids. As a result, Sandman sued a number
of media outlets for defamation. So far The
Washington Post has paid the Sandmann fami
ly $250 thousand and CNN and NBC have
settled although the amount is confidential.
Lawsuits are still pending with Gannett, ABC,
CBS, the New York Times and Rolling Stone
magazine. It is obvious that the national
media’s hatred of Donald Trump caused them
to compromise their objectivity and now are
paying the price. They have also given us
another reason not to trust them and that’s not
good.
Linally, every day without The Woman Who
Shared My Name is an empty one but particu
larly on Valentine’s Day. Our first date was on
Valentine’s Day when I asked her to attend the
Sweetheart Ball in our junior year in high
school, Lour years later, I presented her an
engagement ring with money I had earned
schlepping mail over the Christmas holidays.
Thankfully, she said yes. Otherwise, that
would have been a lot of schlepping for noth
ing. I must remember that Valentine’s Day is
all about love and nothing - not even my loss
-will change that.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough atdick@dickyar-
brough.com; at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA
31139; online at dickyarbrough.com or on
Facebook at www.facebook.com/dickyarb.
T5EIJING 2022-
UNOFFICIAL MASCOT
of the 2022 WINTER
GAMES
© 2022 CREATORS.COM
WWW.TOMSTIGLICH.COM
My love language
My idea of romance is not
exactly girlified.
Sometimes, that can be a
good thing, since my hus
band is not exactly the most
romantic either with his idea
of woo being telling me he
scrubbed the toilet.
Usually, it doesn’t bother
me, but I have to admit there
are a few times I wish things were a little
more champagne and candlelight.
Have I mentioned this to him?
Of course I have.
There’s been times I have wondered
why he doesn’t seem to care about doing
special things for me, then questioned if
there’s something wrong with me.
I’ve been envious of women bragging
about how their husbands got them big
boxes of chocolates, jewelry, and bou
quets of roses even though I don’t care
about any of those things.
Why didn’t Lamar do more to show
me he cared?
I complained about this once to the
grand guru of relationships herself,
Granny, and got smarted by her words.
“Do you do anything nice for him?”
“Yes.” I said defiantly.
“Like what?” she demanded.
“I cook and I let him live,” I said.
She snorted. “Well, ain’t that nice. Did
it ever occur to you that maybe he’d like
something special?”
Truthfully, it hadn’t. I always thought
Valentine’s Day was for women, a day
where we’re supposed to receive gifts
and be treated special. Yet, I hated all
those commercial trappings.
Despite loathing those
things, I still wanted some
kind of semblance of them,
even though Lamar was not
the best when it came to
shopping.
One year he totally forgot
and I ended up with a bag of
Hershey’s Nuggets and the
next year it was a day late so
he could get the candy 75 percent off.
Maybe I wasn’t giving him hints about
what to get me or reminding him about
Valentine’s Day. He always remembered
my birthday though. Why was
Valentine’s Day so difficult? Maybe it
was my own fault because I would say it
was a fake holiday and declared it silly.
Something I had done years and years
ago as a defense mechanism, so I
wouldn’t be disappointed when I didn’t
get anything wrapped in red foil or cov
ered with hearts.
It was my own romantic failings at
work, and not Lamar at all.
It wasn’t until I discovered Gary
Chapman’s Love Languages that I started
to understand that maybe I wasn’t as
romantically challenged as I thought.
I took the quiz online - it’s quite easy
to find with a quick search - and was sur
prised by the results.
Turns out. my primary love language
was acts of service.
Acts of service? What?
Gifts didn’t even get a portion of the
pie, with zero percent.
Words of affirmation and quality time
fell in line after acts of service, two
things that I definitely appreciate.
SUDIE CROUCH
Columnist
Not exactly how I expected love to be
expressed though but it did make sense.
Gifts can often be unneeded and awk
ward. If someone gets you something
you don’t want, it can make you feel like
there is a subtle message behind the gift.
I don’t really need stuff, and if it seems
like it was more expensive than neces
sary, I never feel comfortable using it out
of fear it will get broken. So the gift isn’t
used but shoved in a drawer somewhere,
out of sight and mind.
And if it’s something I really want
badly enough, I buy it myself.
Words of affirmation can be more of a
gift than anything bought, and I have to
admit, Lamar does a good job of making
me feel appreciated most of the time. He
encourages me - when I’m not being a
horses’ behind about something - and is
usually supportive no matter what crazy
scheme I have cooked up.
Quality time is something that it seems
like we never have enough of. There’s
days that I feel like we seldom see each
other even though our cabin is super tiny.
Being able to even spend time watch
ing a TV show together is rare, and then
we usually disagree about what to watch.
But those rare occasions we do, it’s nice,
even if we’re just sitting in the same
room together.
There’s so many ways to express - and
receive - love that have nothing to do
with candy hearts, roses, or jewelry. Most
of those things don’t really matter, not to
me anyway.
Maybe, just maybe, my husband tell
ing me he scrubbed the toilet is truly my
love language after all.
Sudie Crouch is an award winning humor
columnist and author of the recently
e-published novel, "The Dahlman Files: A
Tony Dahlman Paranormal Mystery."
DR. ANDERSON
Getting vaccinated for COVID is just common sense
By Larry Anderson
Anderson Family Medicine
Death is everywhere. In the last two
weeks Covid-19 cases have gone down
but the number of deaths in the past
two weeks have doubled Nationwide.
Georgia and 29 other states have dou
bled the number of fentanyl deaths in
the past two years. Let’s pretend to be
scientists and see what these groups
have in common. How about the cause
being people making poor decisions.
People who do not get vaccinated have
a higher risk of getting Covid-19.
Those getting Covid-19 have a higher
risk of dying then those who did not
have Covid-19. People who buy illegal
drugs have a greater chance of dying
then those who do not buy the illegal
drugs. People who consume illegal
drugs that are laced with fentanyl have
a greater risk of dying than those who
do not consume the illegal drugs.
Perhaps Wal-Mart can have a sale on
Common Sense and we can all stock
up on it before the shelves are bare.
You may be hearing a lot more about
meta-analysis. In a nutshell, this is tak
ing a look at a lot of studies and seeing
what they have in common, their differ
ences, what can be interpreted as useful
or non-useful, etc., etc... Meta-analysis
relies heavily on statistics. Does that
mean the answer is always correct? Not
always so, especially in medicine. The
latest meta-analysis I read said that
sequestering at home only decreased
the death rate by 0.2%. The conclu
sion was that perhaps we should not
do that. So how does that show that
the death rate was not influenced by
sequestering? Remember we are deal
ing with statistics. What are the odds
of dying of Covid-19 if you do not get
the vaccine? What are the odds of
dying from fentanyl overdose when
you buy an illegal drug? When bad
things happen when you are given a
choice and you choose wrongly,
remember my Uncle Thomas “you
have no one to blame but yourself’.
Wear your mask. Get the vaccine.
Thanks for reading.
LETTERTOTHE EDITOR
What is the truth
about our economy?
A writer last week in the Dawson
News predicted that our economy
would get so bad that we had better be
really afraid. My answer to that scare
tactic is:
1. The economy in the US and for
that matter all over the world has its
ups and downs. There are many differ
ent factors that cause these ups and
downs. But the fact is, it always
bounces back. Yes, there is some suf
fering and unfortunately it is usually
low-income people who suffer the
most. The extension of the child-tax
credit would have helped those
Americans, but no Republican voted
for that bill.
2. Unfortunately, America began
supply-side economic theory under
Ronald Reagan in 1981. That system
relies on tax cuts (mainly for the
wealthy) and aggressive deregulation
to spark the growth of private capital.
But this plan has not increased growth
but instead has created a huge wealth
gap where the top 1% of the American
people own 90% of the wealth.
3. This type of economic plan has
the economic concentration of the
American economy in the hands of a
relative few corporate giants with the
power to raise prices. Look to compa
nies like Procter & Gamble who this
year and last raised prices drastically
on everyday staples like diapers and
toilet paper and now have a whopping
24.7% profit in the last 8 months! If
they had tightened their belt instead of
raising prices, inflation would not be
nearly as bad!
4. President Joe Biden has instituted
an economic policy which has focused
on labor supply, human capital, public
infrastructure, R&D, and investments
in a sustainable environment. This new
approach addresses the problem of a
limited labor force and the underin
vestment in training for children who
are not college-bound.
5. As a result of President Biden’s
action the U.S. economy grew by an
astonishing 6.9 percent annual rate
from October to December 2021.
That puts the growth of the U.S. econ
omy for 2021 at 5.7 percent in 2021.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, this is
the fastest full-year growth since
1984. At the same time, the U.S.
added 6 million jobs in 2021, putting
the unemployment rate below 4%.
Economists predict that in 2022 the
economy will continue to grow at a
much higher rate than the 1.8% poli
cymakers generally expect, expanding
at 3.9%.
6. And just last week Governor
Kemp announced that Dawson
County would receive a $1,332,621
grant to expand Broadband. That
money came from President Biden
and the Democrats who supported the
American Rescue Plan. Not one
Republican voted for that bill!
So don’t be terrorized by the writ
ing of people who don’t understand
the economy but are just trying to
scare you. Yes, there is inflation, but
good times are ahead! And President
Biden will bring our economy back
for all the people!!!
Bette Holland
Dawsonville
