County now is a fiefdom
Cherokee Scout Editor Randy Foster, your opening salvo spanning your first two paragraphs on the school reorganization in the Jan. 24 edition of the Cherokee Scout, and the manner in which it was imposed, continues to highlight the modern-day fiefdom that rules Cherokee County.
Further along, you highlight the arrogance and disregard for public hearings nor advance notice under the guise that “public input was not required ...”
The alleged goal of reorganization is to move the school district “in a more efficient direction.” More efficient for whom?
Efficiency at the expense of hardship imposed on the parents and their children being shuffled around like cattle in name of such “efficiency?”
You cannot alter the face of a taxpaying community as to how and where its children are educated without public input and a public vote. That is the American way. Without that, Cherokee County residents are living in a fiefdom.
Voting for commissioners is nothing more than changing the guard over who rules the fiefdom.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” (George Orwell). Welcome to Animal Farm, folks.
Ron Gaynor, Murphy
About health and wellness
Thank you, Nicole Wright, for your series of occasional articles.
The article featuring Jessie Massey in the Jan. 24 edition of the Cherokee Scout is refreshing. The value of touch vs. the medical non-touch sterility behind a mask or with gloves on. In the medical business, rarely is the body considered a whole single unit, complexly designed. The medical community is so divided into multiple specialties, with little or no communication to treat a whole being.
Each massage therapist has different skills; it takes time to find the right one for you. It is a choice based on your understanding of your own body. True therapeutic intervention usually results in positive effects; unlike the when necessary and usually invasive medical care as the last resort; and the endless side effects to be treated with pharmaceuticals.
Like choices in the grocery store or at a farmers market, the freedom of choice and recognizing your own bodily mental mindfulness is yours alone. It can definitely be enhanced with a massage therapist relationship.
Jessie’s quote says it all: “The energy transfer has no words to express the exchange.”
We are blessed in Murphy with choices in therapeutic care – unlike medical care, where you are shipped off to Asheville, Tennessee or Georgia or seek on your own.
Jessie, keep up the good work. Enjoy your practice; spread the word one person at a time.
Respectfully, I am not a client at Massey Massage.
Mary Anne Duffy, Murphy
‘Just pay it forward’
It was a late breakfast outing on a hot, summer day. I reached into my pocket for the key fob to lock my vehicle upon entering the restaurant. The fob and its attached keys fumbled out of my hand and fell to the ground – but it was not the ground.
In front of my parking space was a large steel, storm grate. As if in slow motion, I watched my keys bounce off the steel grate, slipping through the opening, falling some 6 feet below to the bottom of the storm drain.
My mind raced numerous scenarios of how to retrieve my keys? It would be costly and time consuming to order a new fob. I called the fire department, several locksmiths and hardware stores. No one had any suggestions to help me.
Finally, I called the property manager’s office in the center where the restaurant was located. To my surprise, the manager arrived with a ball of string and two small magnets. He sat there on the hot pavement for about 20 minutes, trying to fish out my keys between the bars on the grate. The magnets were too weak to grab hold. He left and said he would be back.
He returned with stronger magnets. Lowering the string of magnets, he grabbed the keys, but the magnet strength was attracted to the metal sides of the drain. Manipulating the string and magnets, using another stick to keep the magnets from grabbing the sides, he slowly guided the keys to the surface and was able to secure them. He had spent nearly two hours hovering over that grate to retrieve my keys.
I was overwhelmed with gratitude by his ingenuity and persistence to help me. How could I possibly thank this man? I reached for my wallet to offer some compensation for his selfless efforts. He respectfully declined and kindly said to me, “Just pay it forward.”
Robert Karl, Murphy
Witnessing the miracle
Though God sent His son, Jesus, down to Earth to save sinners from hell, He also performed many miracles along His way. He healed the sick, the lame, the blind and the paralyzed. He healed those with leprosy, cast out demons and even raised the dead.
One of the greatest miracles recorded for us is in Matthew 14. Jesus saw the multitudes crowding around him and told them to go sit on the hillside, but the disciples said to their Master, “We don’t have enough food to feed 5,000 men” plus their families, which could have been as many as 14,000 people.
Then one of the disciples told Jesus there was a boy who has two fishes and five loaves of bread. Jesus took them, looked upward to heaven, blessed the food and after everyone were full 12 baskets full of fragments remained. Only God has the power to create an abundance when needed.
Here’s an example that one pastor on television said: “The crowd that had just been fed the day before on the hillside, now have appeared the next day where Jesus and His disciples are on the other side of the lake and why are they there. One of them spoke out to Jesus and told Him to feed the crowd again. Wow! Wasn’t the miracle Jesus did yesterday not enough to satisfy their hunger?”
Today, many people have a spiritual blindness because of their unbelief of who Jesus said He was, the Son of God who came to save the world from its sin. God is still seeking souls that need a Savior.
Are you the one God is knocking on your heart’s door? I pray you invite Him in. Your heart will be glad you did.
Frank Combs, Blairsville, Ga.
Ignorance can still be bliss
Concerning the letter to the editor, “Genocide is always evil” (Jan. 24 Cherokee Scout), President Ronald Reagan’s quote applies: “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
The premise that Palestinian Arabs are the original inhabitants and Israel the occupier reveals an ignorance of biblical truth and history.
Mary Mason is fond of Bible quoting to support her opinion with liberal hermeneutics, my preference leans literal vice liberal. The Bible clarifies the area’s name and who owned Canaan/Judea (Genesis 11:31 and 12:5-6.). There’s no reference to Palestine areas, just Canaan.
In Leviticus 25:18-23, God states who owns the land. The coup de grace to the “occupier” deception is Deuteronomy 7. This “promised land” belongs to God, Who blessed His people with the settling and stewardship responsibility from the beginning. God’s Covenants with Israel are rock solid, and attacks on these covenants are an attack on God’s character.
In 70 A.D., the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.
In 130 A.D., Emperor Hadrian began building a colony named Aelia Capitolina on the ruins of Jerusalem.
In 135 A.D., the area Canaan/Judea was renamed Syria Paleastina. The name “Palestine” didn’t gain traction until the beginning of the Renaissance.
It was common for the international press to label Jews living in the “British mandated” area as Palestinians until 1948. In World War II, the British had a Palestinian brigade, which was manned by both Jews and Arabs, in separate companies.
The Balfour Declaration 1917, and U.N. Resolution No. 181 (11/1947) were key pieces of legislation that partition Palestine.
Joel 3:1-3 and Zechariah 12:1-14 and Jeremiah 23:4-10 prophesied the consequences of partitioning Israel.
In 1956, Ahmed Shukeiri testified before the United Nations there was no such place as Palestine. It’s a Jewish place. “Arabs are not Palestinians.” In 1964, he founded the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Thomas Schildgen, Andrews
Biden doesn’t deserve vote
I’m not one to wish my life away, but I’m anxious to see the results of the November presidential election. I want to see if the people of the United State of America have had enough of this idiot who claims to be our rightfully elected president.
As for our current administration, the “party” comes first, the people and the country comes second. The only reason things are not worse is because Republicans control the House.
Just read a great book, Government Gangster by Kash Pramod Patel. Amazon has this book for around $17. If there is one honest person in the Biden administration, I don’t know who it is. If perhaps you vote Democrat in this year’s presidential election, as I see it, there are two reasons:
- You want the United States to be a Communist country.
- You are not aware of what the Democratic Party wants to do and is doing the United States of America.
The Democratic party hates America in its present state, do you? The Biden Administration, the swamp, the deep state is purposely supporting an agenda that is very harmful to America.
Look at the first 10 of the 27 amendments, the Biden administration has violated at least seven. As for a letter in the Cherokee Scout, yes, I get it, and have just subscribed to the Epoch Times.
Our governor is Democrat Roy Cooper. Hopefully, his replacement will be Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor. He is black, so I’m no racist. He has my vote.
The two presidential candidates left are Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. Trump gets my vote.
What we have in the White House has a likeness of what comes out of the south end of a northbound cow. Biden is a disgrace to the United States.
Perry Reece, Hayesville
What’s the real truth?
Two thousand years, and worldly thinkers are still asking, “What is truth?”
They still say crucify good and turn evil loose. Their way of thinking defies Aristotle and the law of contradiction, which is the way of all reasoning. They reason if a man thinks he’s a woman, he is a woman. If someone steps on a turtle or eagle egg they are jailed but if a woman has a baby vacuumed from her womb, it’s lawful and the taxpayer pays the bill. What is truth?
In November 2020, America traded a brilliant businessman for a politician. A businessman can be described in one word. Their sole purpose and only function is described by that word … profit. A politician is the exact opposite.
As an example, when the first automobile was invented, the horse-and-buggy industry must have seen the writing on the wall. A politician would have sent the EPA, IRS, FBI and the rest of the alphabet soup to shut down the car factory. (Similar to the Xcel pipeline project.) A businessman would cancel all restrictions and make sure the factory is successful. As another example, how many individuals still use a typewriter?
Why has America been the greatest nation ever? Have we reached our end? Will we now crucify the good (our Constitution) for evil (socialism, Communism)? What is truth?
Ed Huber, Copperhill, Tenn.
Satan and end times
Policy decisions by Democrat Party administrations over an 11-year span are inexplicable to a patriotic American. Have we reached that epoch discussed in the New Testament of the Bible, covered in the Book of Revelation, where the apocalyptic defeat of an evil beast, a final divine judgment and the coming of a New Jerusalem, or metaphorically New America, is achieved through purification of Earth?
Democrat policies confound me:
- Obama unfroze over $50 billion of Iranian assets in 2015 as part of the ill-conceived nuclear deal.
- Iran made $80 billion in profits from illicit oil sales since Biden took office because of relaxed sanctions against the world’s premier terrorist state.
- Biden’s administration approved a sanctions waiver that allows Iran access to at least $10 billion in previously frozen funds held in Iraq. Unimaginable the contested decision came a month after the Tehran-backed Islamist group Hamas launched an attack on Israel that left over 1,200 mostly civilians dead – the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust.
- Examine our borders. What well-reasoned person would leave our Mexican border open and invite in the unvetted world – including violent criminals, drug traffickers, human traffickers, pedophiles, Third World diseases, terrorists and military-age males from China, our worst enemy?
- Open borders enable cartels to export deadly drugs into our country – like fentanyl. Drug overdoses kill over 100,000 Americans a year, and with increased border traffic that number could increase to 150,000 deaths annually.
- We know who’s allowing these terrible, evil, unimaginable things in America – Biden and the Democrat Party. No one person is this naive, foolish or otherwise incompetent.
They’ve sold us out. Et tu, Brute?
Could Biden and the Democrat Party leadership be taking orders from the “Great Adversary?” Is Satan in charge? Are we in “end times?”
Terry Payne, Marble