The following are letters submitted to the Clay County Progress from readers.
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Club 66 veterans thanks community for contributions
hank you to our patrons and members. We lost two very good members in the past three months. Doug “Bluefin” Woodcock, of Blairsville, Ga. and Mikey R. Cones, of Hayesville.
Through our club and thrift store, with the community’s help and members, we were able to raise money for Woodcock’s wishes to help out children in need, we donated money to Truett Association Baptist Children’s Home in his name.
Cones was a good friend and member who volunteered helping with the thrift store with the help of member’s we raised enough money to have Cones cremated as his death was very unexpected we are thankful for everyone’s help and support. God Bless.
Kathleen Little
Should we boycott Major League Baseball?
What happened to Major League Baseball? Yes, it has resurfaced with a modified 60-game schedule but a negative additive has emerged with the return of our national pastime. Politics in the form of Black Lives Matter has surfaced in baseball and all sports and once again, divided fans politically, advertising for Nike with uniform logos is bad enough. Now we are being fed BLM logos on the pitcher's mound and with the Red Sox, a massive light show spelling out Black Lives Matter on the back of the Green Monster — left field wall facing the Mass. Pike.
You Braves fans will ask, what is this Sox fan doing in Atlanta territory? I will say, I was a huge Tommy Glavin fan and watched him on the diamond and the hockey rink as a youngster growing up in Billerica, Mass. Baseball was his choice. He could have suited up for any Division I hockey team. I apologize for this diversion and will stay on tract to voice my opinion but I had to get that in there.
What MLB has done instead of bringing people together through honest sports competition, baseball has now become an opportunity for politics of hate to become more important than the game itself.
Politics invades every phase of our lives and baseball was a place that you could enjoy balls, strikes, homeruns, wins and losses — separate and away from any politics.
I for one can't boycott the game. My hope is that we will soon return to our national pastime that is devoid of politics and where people are not judged by the color of their skin, the politics of their party or their religion, but rather are respected for the content of their character and their ability to play the game.
We are in a period of dumbing down in America and have been since Affirmative Action reared its ugly head in the late 80s and early 90s. The "every kid gets a trophy" idea destroys competitiveness. Now we have the "cancel culture" that wants to wipe out history. It took a lot of effort and logistics to get the first pitch thrown this year and I applaud all involved. Let's take two and hit to right and try to get back in the old ball game. Remember, all lives matter.
Semper Fi, Bob Harrington
Trumps bad response to COVID-19
If Donald J. Trump did so good on COVID-19 why was it hidden from the American people for 5 months? Then in the United States we only test 559 people while the United Kingdom and South Korea tested more than 100,000 people and Germany tested more than 89,000 people in the first five weeks.
Donald J. Trump failed the American people. He also said he would not wear a mask but he has one on now. Everyone should wear a mask. The life you save might be your own. Our county commissioners should set an example for everyone to follow. Wear a mask.
Positive cases are up because of more tests for COVID. If we did more IQ tests the rate of morons would go through the roof.
Ronnie Foster
President continues to put America first
President Trump has pushed a “buy American, hire American” agenda since he took office. The latest example of his commitment to this principle is right in our backyard.
The president of the Tennessee Valley Authority, an organization created to serve American taxpayers, earned $8 million per year while he cut American jobs and outsourced them to foreign workers.
Trump was right to tell the Chairman of the TVA Board, who oversaw the outsourcing, “You’re fired.”
The federal government created the TVA during the Great Depression to boost economic development, supply power and control flooding in the Tennessee Valley, which includes part of western North Carolina that I represent in the N.C. Senate.
The TVA provided 379 million kilowatt-hours to North Carolina customers last year and it manages 21,000 acres of property across four different reservoirs in our state.
The organization largely does its job well. It provides low-cost, reliable electricity and has sound finances.
When the TVA opted to outsource 20 percent of its technology jobs in the middle of a recession, it abandoned a fundamental principle of any federally-backed organization: Loyalty to the American taxpayer means loyalty to the American worker.
Trump embraces that principle and he’s backed it up with substantive action. His decision to fire the TVA Chairman is a warning to other federal boards: hire American or else.
Just last week, Trump issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to review their contractor hiring practices to ensure jobs backed by American taxpayers go to American workers.
American workers feel that globalization has left them behind. Bad trade deals like NAFTA may have increased overall economic growth, but at a tremendous cost to the very people who made that growth possible in the first place.
Trump’s move to successfully renegotiate NAFTA, together with the executive order he announced this week and his aggressive posture toward TVA’s outsourcing, underscores his commitment to follow through on his promise to put America First.
Sen. Jim Davis
The real status of COVID-19 research
Your August 6 editorial “Here’s what I know about the COVID-19 virus“ prompted me to try to present a better picture of the state of COVID-19 treatment.
Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work for either mild or severe cases, according to some sources, but other sources disagree. Research is also continuing on its use as a prophylactic. However, I don’t want to dwell on hydroxychloroquine and do want to focus on everything else going on in a search for better treatment.
One of the big problems with the pandemic has been that many pre-prints of studies are jumped on by the press as valid. The standard purpose of a pre-print is to collect criticism and comments and not to say the study is complete and correct.
Let’s continue just with the good news. There are many serious medical journals and COVID-19 groups with information if you hunt for them. I keep a list of good articles and studies and here is a summary of what we know about medications: Only Remdesivir and Dexamethasone, a corticosteroid, have officially completed successful trials. Other systemic corticosteroids, monoclonal (artificial) antibodies and even common anti-inflammatories and anti-virals are also being tested and are showing significant promise. Good monoclonals may be in use before a good vaccine.
In these categories and some others, drugs that are in trial with reported successes include the old, cheap and common anti-inflammatories Indomethacin and Colchicine. Others are Ruxolitinib, Ivermectin, Fenofibrate, Convalescent plasma, SNG001 — the inhaled formulation of interferon beta, Apilimod, the anti-viral RFL-100 — Aviptadil, a potentially very good anti-viral, N-Acetylcysteine, a special edible seaweed extract and heparin, LY6E protein, Photodynamic Therapy (PDT), Monoclonal Antibodies and an exciting new list not tested yet consisting of Icatibant, Danazol, Stanozolol, Ecallantide, Berinert, Cinryze and Haegarda based on an important supercomputer study just completed. Another potentially exciting treatment is a combination of Ivermectin and Doxycycline, perhaps together with zinc, already being used at some hospitals. A quick Google search on any of those combined with the word coronavirus will deliver good results.
As prophylactics, Vitamin D3 is considered useful if you might be deficient in it. One good abbreviated summary document about many of these drugs is at: www.bmj.com. A large set of protocols and therapeutics can be found at: www.covidprotocols.org/protocols/therapeutics. That set is also available as a free iPhone app. You can expect more approved good drugs soon from those listed here and others.
Michael Gora
Michael Gora is best known in retirement for his photography and work on local history, but is a physicist and computer scientist by background. He was the tech lead on the first large-scale study of the quality of health care in the Veterans Administration. He has been the lead on many other large data studies.
Where is Donald Trump’s
I took the time to rewatch the videos of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign promises about his health care plan. Offering no specifics, Trump insisted it would be “terrific,” “a beautiful plan,” “better than Obamacare” and at “a fraction of the cost.” Trump also bragged he would immediately “repeal and replace” Obamacare in “just a few days” if he and a Republican Congress were elected.
Some of America’s poor actually voted for Trump based on his healthcare promises — believing they would soon get coverage better and cheaper than what they currently had, assuming they had any coverage at all. Here we are nearly four years later and the only thing Trump and Republicans have done is file lawsuit after lawsuit trying to kill the Affordable Care Act and push budget cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
Tens of millions of poor Americans have relied upon the ACA as the first and only health care plan they ever had. Millions desperately rely upon the ACA’s pre-existing condition protection, coverage they were unable to get elsewhere for themselves or for a family member with serious health issues that rendered them uninsurable. Thank you President Obama.
Instead of hammering out a real health care plan as promised, Trump and Republicans immediately passed a massive $1.6 trillion tax cut going primarily to corporations and the wealthy, while ignoring and even working to defund, the health needs of the poor. Now, with less than three months before the next election, and with a health pandemic ravaging much of the nation, Trump is again promising the long awaited health care plan he never delivered. He promised to produce the details of his plan “within two weeks” a month ago. He promises to be the champion of pre-existing condition coverage, while continuing to attack that very same coverage in the courts. I’m guessing there will be only vague promises and hype before the November election, with Trump hoping once again to con a sizable number of poor Americans, eager for quality health care they can better afford, into trusting him once again.
As Sen. Amy Klobuchar said during the Democrat’s presidential debates, Donald Trump is “all foam and no beer.” He’s taken great care of himself — he’s taken great care of his wealthy friends and cronies, but as for America’s poor, it’s a whole different story.
Government monthly non-farm payroll records show Obama averaged 215,000 new jobs created per month during his second term, where Trump averaged only 192,000 per month up through February of this year, before COVID-19 changed things for everyone. Trump gave the neediest among us no new health plan and produced fewer jobs by which they might gain healthcare for themselves. True, the unemployment rate continued to decline, but at a slower pace than under Obama and with a 27 percent greater annual debt increase than under Obama. Klobuchar got it exactly right: “all foam and no beer,” but plenty of the best champagne flowing at Mar-a-Lago.
James Messmer
Encounters prove it’s a wild, wild life
One day as my wife came into the Mountain Harbour community she experienced a strange encounter. As she entered through the front entrance and followed the road which winds through the woods on its way to the residential area, she had the sense she was being watched. As she slowed down to look around, the feeling intensified. She stopped and there it was. She reached for her phone while fixating on the prize. On the slope of a hill and at eye level, a bobcat was staring curiously at her. Both were fixated on the other.
I have done wildlife photography around the world and have filmed unusual subjects like muskox and grizzly bears. I have lived in many places in the United States, but now reside in Hayesville. I am still impressed with the diversity of wildlife that can be seen in our own neighborhood each season. Since there is no hunting allowed in our immediate area, it has created a haven for our wildlife residents. They know it somehow. It can be seen when you drive by a half dozen deer that show little or no interest in running away. Our cloistered community harbors a collection of animals from black bears, foxes, deer and a posse of turkeys. The season when wild turkey chicks appear is especially fun — each animal sharing this very symbiotic relationship with their human neighbors.
With the broad range vistas from the Mountain Harbour Golf course and surrounding mountains, there is an abundance of wildlife that would rival Denali itself. One of the unexpected pleasures of living in this area is having a cup full of wildlife almost every day. Best show times are dawn and dusk.
Doug Metzger