Spherical Model: December 2024

Friday, December 13, 2024

Still Fighting the Swamp in Texas

While this is a blog related to political philosophy, I only occasionally write about actual politics. But this is one of those days, with some inside baseball-type details.

Luke Macias, of Texas Scorecard, gives the details better than anybody, so you may want to listen to him on this. We’re talking about what happened last Saturday, December 7, when the Republican Caucus of the Texas House met to choose their speaker—or, technically, to go over rules and try to come to agreement. I think an actual physical vote happens in January when the full House meets at the start of session.

The Texas House is at a hinge point: either
keep the swamp or listen to the voice of
the people and let conservatives lead.
Image from a visit to the Texas Capitol
with the grandkids in 2018.

Texas is a red state, with blue and purple pockets, mainly in the big urban areas. And we just moved even more red this election. Even Harris County elected several Republican judges and a couple of other countywide positions. So you’d think it would be a given that the House Republicans would get together and agree on their leadership. But that hasn’t been happening.

This has been a frustration in the state for quite a while. Some nominal Republican makes backroom deals with the full contingent of Democrats, and then adds a few Republicans, and gets themselves elected as the Republican-majority Speaker. We saw it with Straus, and most recently with Dade Phelan. Phelan, you may recall, was on video, apparently drunk while wielding the gavel at the end of the 2023 session. I don’t know whether that was the actual explanation for the slurring, but it sure looked like it.

Phelan wielded a lot of power. He kept Republicans supporting him by giving money to their campaign coffers (I think he apportions it from some fund; it doesn’t come out of his own pocket), and by promising them committee assignments that matter to them. He does the same with Democrats.

In our platform, we’ve been calling for no Democrat committee chairs; Phelan refused to listen. So Phelan was primaried this past February, and people from around the state went to his district to block walk and do the retail campaign work. His opponent very nearly took him out, but Phelan managed to win—we think by having Democrats cross over and vote in the Republican Primary.

Phelan was insisting he’d be Speaker nevertheless. There were challengers, and it had come down to David Cook. Early on Tom Oliverson had put his hat in the ring; he’s local and reliably conservative, and promised to end the Democrat chairs so we could get some legislation through this next session. I don’t know when he dropped out, but the conservatives I know are satisfied with Cook. I don’t personally know much about him, so I am going on trust.

Rep. David Cook is the Republican Caucus choice for Texas House Speaker.
Image and contact info from his House website.

We precinct chairs wrote resolutions, and sent letters, emails, etc., to pressure our legislators to vote for a conservative who would end Democrat chairs—and that could not be Phelan. I think maybe Phelan felt the lack of support might be insurmountable, because of the disdain he has drawn. Anyway, last week he dropped out of the race—but recommended a substitute who would keep the little fiefdom of RINOs alive: Dustin Burrows. Burrows was the Calendars Committee Chair last session. And Calendars is where good bills go to die. In that position, he could just keep bills from getting a floor vote. The story of the last session was, good bills came out of the Senate, which either never got assigned to committee, or weren’t heard in committee, or didn’t come out of committee, or died in Calendars when didn’t get scheduled for a floor vote. The Governor’s priorities couldn’t even get done in multiple special sessions, after the failure of the regular session.

On Saturday, at that Caucus meeting, they decided on rules, which included that the entire Republican Caucus would vote together on their choice, rather than letting the Democrat minority plus a few Republicans choose the Speaker.

During two votes, no one got the needed number of votes. Then, during a short break, the Burrows group asked for a longer break—which is not supposed to happen; votes come right after one another to avoid dealmaking and undue pressure. Three hours later they still hadn’t come back. They had tried to break quorum. The remaining members easily elected David Cook. But simultaneously Burrows announced that he had the votes and would be the new speaker. He claimed to have all the Democrat votes plus enough Republicans to put him over the top.

Rep. Burrows, Phelan's choice as the House Speaker,
combined with Democrats and a relatively small
contingent of Republicans to claim he had the votes
to be the next Speaker. He is not conservative, and
he is not the choice of the House Republican Caucus.
Image from his House website.

He had the hubris to put out a list, and almost immediately eight on that list declared that they were not voting for Burrows and had not given him their endorsement. Even some Democrats said that; they had other Democrat choices, so why would they vote for a Republican? And a few were on both the Burrows and Cook lists, so their allegiance was unclear.

What we were seeing was the backroom deal that they’d done clandestinely in the past, but now, maybe because of desperation, they were doing it brazenly and openly. A raw push for power. In this case, even without the actual votes, they seemed to think, if they said it, people would cave, because that had always worked in the past.

Over the next day or so, pressure came on those who were on the Burrows list, or both lists. Here in Harris County, we saw Mano De Ayala and Sam Harless declare for Cook (although Mano’s was rather tepid, sort of a “well, that’s the rule, so I’ll abide by it”). The only holdout in the county is my representative, Lacey Hull.

Lacey Hull, and contact info, from her House website

She fell in with the Phelan swamp almost the moment she got elected in 2020, which was a disappointment. She had talked the conservative talk in her campaign. She’s a pleasant personality, and I still find her open and willing to talk about our important issues (not that this is a common occurrence, but I met with her in her office before the 2023 session, and I see her at occasional political events that precinct chairs go to). On a few issues she even works on with enthusiasm. But there are other things she’s just been weak on, for reasons that are hard to explain, other than the swamp milieu. She voted for the AG Ken Paxton impeachment—because the allegations were serious, but not because the evidence had been brought in that two-day sham hearing sprung on everybody at the end of session in 2023. It’s hard to dismiss that.

She was primaried both in 2022 and 2024. But there’s power in incumbency. I supported an opponent in 2022, and Hull nevertheless treated me as though she was unaware of that, which was helpful. In 2024 I didn’t feel good about her opponent, so, with misgivings, I voted for Lacey Hull. I had ended up campaigning for precinct chair at the early voting location where Lacey’s mother was campaigning for Lacey, and her mother is as pleasant to be around as she is. It’s hard not to like Lacey Hull. But I continue to be disappointed that she didn’t turn out to be the solid conservative we thought we were electing. (There are personal scandals people talk about; I haven’t ever talked about them with her, but my assumption is they’re true, unfortunately. It means less support for family values.)

So, how do we persuade a person to do the right thing? It has to be by convincing them it’s in their best interest.

I don’t know what she was getting, exactly, from Phelan and his minions. But maybe if she realized what support she would get by standing up for conservative causes, she wouldn’t miss having to do shady deals with the devil. Maybe she could actually convert to being a conservative bright star. I think that would be a great outcome. We could have a successful conservative session—unblocked by RINO obstructionists—and we’d be happy to let her take credit for that in her next campaign.

The precinct chairs in the entire County have been putting pressure on our representatives. Last Monday, the Harris County Republican Party passed a resolution calling for all the Republicans in the County to follow the Caucus rules and vote with the Caucus for David Cook.

With Lacey Hull now as the last holdout in the County, all the pressure will now be aimed at her. The precinct chairs in her district (me included) are sending out a resolution—a statement letting her know that we expect her to abide by Caucus rules, and will be sending that to media as well. Statewide, the County Republican Chairs have all signed resolutions pressuring the 26 or so holdouts. President-elect Trump has tweeted about the Texas Speaker race—and he’s on the conservative side with us.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting campaign texts galore from Burrows—describing Cook as a RINO and claiming to be the conservative who fights for Governor Abbott’s conservative agenda, which Burrows literally stonewalled last session. The lies are blatant. They’re asking people in the districts on Burrows’ list to contact their representative and tell them to support the “conservative,” Burrows, for Speaker.

This is a screenshot from a text sent
to my phone on December 10. This is
a blatant lie. Cook didn't solicit support
from the Democrats; Burrows literally
and openly did that. This text was linked
to something called redgop.vote.

This pro-Burrows text also came to my phone
on December 10. And this is also a lie:
Burrows deliberately thwarted conservative bills
in the last session. And Burrows is certainly
not "the most conservative member
of the Texas House." The text was signed
"Paul, The American Opportunity PAC"

We thought the ubiquitous campaign texts were coming to an end, after the November election. This isn’t even a campaign the people can vote on; all they can do is let their representatives know their opinions. And, unless you’re paying attention to something like this—during the post-election, Christmas season—you might believe you’re doing the right thing to tell your representative to vote for the conservative, but just have the wrong name attached. These aren’t coming to the neighboring districts, by the way. Just to the ones Burrows doesn’t want to lose, or maybe some he thinks he can gain back.

It's not going to work. We’re determined to get a conservative Speaker this time. “Be not weary in well doing,” right? But I the need to fight for conservatism in Texas is relentless.

Saturday, December 7, 2024

How Did We Know?

A report came out this week, 557 pages, giving us what we now know, 5 years into this ordeal, about the COVID-19 pandemic, its origins, the response—all the things we were told were conspiracy theories and we weren’t allowed to talk about. They were true. I feel exonerated. But still puzzled.

We knew these things, in pretty close to real time. Or at least we had very good reason to believe we knew them. And all the while the “experts” were feeding the public some very wrong “official narrative” that we could see was not true.

For some reason, some of us could see through the official narrative and many others could not.

cover page of the House Coronavirus Pandemic report

What’s In the Report

First, a quick look at the report. It includes a lot of “what happened,” for the sake of history. But its intention is more as a guideline for future pandemics, so we don’t repeat the mistakes. (The conspiracy ~~theorist/~~observer in me thinks, maybe they weren’t mistakes; maybe they were intentional willingness to harm. But that’s not the focus of the report.) It begins with a letter from the subcommittee chair Brad Wenstrup, a member of Congress who is also a doctor (podiatrist) identifying 5 points of bipartisan agreement and 7 findings. [Also, there’s an official 18-page summary of the recommendations, here.]

These are the five points of agreement:

1) The possibility that COVID-19 emerged because of a laboratory or research related accident is not a conspiracy theory.

2) EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive US taxpayer dollars.

3) Scientific messaging must be clear and concise, backed by evidentiary support, and come from trusted messengers, such as front-line doctors treating patients.

4) Public health officials must work to regain Americans’ trust; Americans want to be educated, not indoctrinated.

5) Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo participated in medical malpractice and publicly covered up the total number of nursing home fatalities in New York.

Besides those five points of agreement, the Select Subcommittee came up with the following seven findings, which I believe will be detailed in the body of the report, but this works well as a summary—and let me note, below, areas where I do not agree (point 3 in particular):

1) The US National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

2) The Chinese government, agencies within the US Government, and some members of the international scientific community sought to cover-up facts concerning the origins of the pandemic.

3) Operation Warp Speed was a tremendous success and a model to build upon in the future. The vaccines, which are now probably better characterized as therapeutics, undoubtedly saved millions of lives by diminishing likelihood of severe disease and death.

4) Rampant fraud, waste, and abuse plagued the COVID-19 pandemic response.

5) Pandemic-era school closures will have enduring impact on generations of America’s children, and these closures were enabled by groups meant to serve those children.

6) The Constitution cannot be suspended in times of crisis and restrictions on freedoms sow distrust in public health.

7) The prescription cannot be worse than the disease, such as strict and overly broad lockdowns that led to predictable anguish and avoidable consequences.

There are some other statements within the report that probably ought to be highlighted as well, for example:

· The six-foot social distancing requirement was not supported by science.

· Masks and mask mandates were ineffective at controlling the spread of COVID-19.

· Unscientific COVID-19 lockdowns caused more harm than good.

· Vaccine mandates were not supported by science and caused more harm than good.

· Public health officials disregarded natural immunity, despite its proven effectiveness and durability.

CDC image of the COVID-19 virus

I don’t want to go through every point. But I’d like to comment on a few.

Lab Leak. It was either an accidental lab leak or a purposeful lab leak. I go with accidental, but who knows. We might have known, if that line of questioning had been allowed when the evidence was fresh. The Chinese wanted to save face, but it seems less damning to them to have a lab leak—followed by better safety measures—than a purposeful leak. They’re a communist regime, so we may not have gotten clear answers, but that was the time to try, rather than shutting down questioning and insisting on the wet market lie. (And we have added nagging questions about how much was related to Hunter Biden’s corrupt influence peddling in China.)

Messaging. It's not that messaging wasn’t as clear as it needed to be; it’s that the messaging was a lie, and clear truth was not allowed—because it would confuse the public, or rather, because it would cause the public to doubt the official lies.

Front-line Doctors. It is true that we needed to hear more from front-line doctors, who were treating patients. Those of us who had good information got it from such sources. The official “experts” who were lying to us were not even seeing patients, which means they were not experts at treating the disease and should have deferred to those with experience. Instead, they shut down those with actual clinical experience; some lost their jobs for even speaking about possible treatments. It’s a stretch to call that an error; that was purposeful, harmful tyranny.

School Closures. We knew almost from the very beginning (before schools were shut down) that the disease was not affecting children. Nor was there evidence that children were carriers, as they often are with respiratory infections. Children were at near zero risk, and teachers/staff were at near zero risk of contracting the illness from the children. In other words, the teachers would have been safer being around the children than they would have been in most other environments. The schools were closed, because it was part of the fear campaign. People highly value our children, so if we think they are at risk, we are more likely to worry and follow orders that we’re told will keep them safe. Let’s just be clear that instilling fear in order to gain compliance is not a valid reason for shutting down schools and depriving children of a year’s education—for which we nevertheless paid for with our taxes.

Social Distancing, Masks, and Lockdowns. “Follow the Science” was shouted at us if we so much as questioned these policies. But they were not following actual science. Those who looked at actual science knew this. I complied when required, with the social distancing and mask wearing. But only when required. The facts were available pretty early on about the inefficacy of masks, where the size of the virus were so much smaller than the holes in various fabrics that you could picture trying to keep mosquitoes out of your yard with a chain-link fence.

infographic by Visual Capitalist, found here

And the lockdown explanation, by simple logic, would only work in an absolute situation: total lockdown—without any contact with other humans—for the length of time from exposure to certainty that it didn’t affect the contactee. We could not, and did not, shut down all human interaction for that length of time. We were told it was “two weeks to flatten the curve,” which meant that it would still spread, but would spread more slowly, so our hospitals wouldn’t get overrun. Our hospitals (with maybe a couple of exceptions worldwide) did not get overrun. This was never necessary. And we could all see the lie when the order to stay home continued after the two weeks.

The Vax. Operation Warp Speed continues to be a point of disagreement between Donald Trump and his supporters. We voted for him anyway, because there are so many other reasons. But either he was misinformed, and maybe is still being misinformed, or he pushed the vaccines for another reason—possibly because the tyrants wanted everything shut down for years, to create a vaccine and test it before rolling it out, and he was preventing them from continuing that lockdown tactic indefinitely. Nevertheless, the “vaccine” was not a vaccine; it was a therapeutic drug, which included untested mRNA. They tried changing the definition of vaccine to include what this was, but that was an obvious ploy. They used the terms “safe and effective,” when the data showed that it was neither.

I haven’t read the entire study. This part comes around page 301. They say Operation Warp Speed was a huge success. I beg to differ. We know that the “vaccine” did not prevent the spread of the disease; it did not prevent contracting the disease. It requires proving a negative to say that it made the disease less bad for the individual. (An acquaintance who died of COVID, one of very few that I knew, had taken the vaccine, and was told in the hospital how fortunate that was, because without the vaccine it could have been so much worse.) But there wasn’t testing to show a comparison. There is growing data to show the contrary.

The report does admit that there were adverse reactions, and they should be investigated. You think? There are other reports coming out, showing the various harms from the vax. Not everyone appears to be affected, and that’s good. Most of the people I know got at least one or two doses (two was the minimum to be considered vaccinated).

What we have, going forward, is a long-term control study, comparing people who took the vax (and however many times) and people who did not. We unvaxxed are the control group. You’re welcome. If the long list of symptoms for us does not go up commensurate with those who got the vax, then we can hypothesize (and further test) that the vax caused the rise is myocarditis in young people, exponential rises in cancer rates, blood clots, aneurysms, and more.

Since those who took the vax did so out of some combination of fear of the disease and a willingness to be a good citizen who doesn’t fight the system, I don’t want to add fear that some terrible outcome will be lurking in their body. While I’m glad I don’t have that fear (I have plenty of health issues already that I’m diligently taking care of), if people are two years out from their vax and haven’t noticed anything yet, they might have dodged a bullet there. (Some conspiracy theories involve there being good and bad batches of the vax, and that the “good” ones didn’t actually have any of the bad stuff in them. I note that such theories exist, but I don’t know how to think through someone in a production facility knowingly creating and sending out good and bad batches. There’s enough known evil in the story of COVID-19, that we don’t need to invent even more.)

My Question: How Did We Know All Along?

On Viva Frei’s response to the report, he began with: “Virtually everything they once called a conspiracy theory they literally now just confirmed as reality.” Then he says, kidding not kidding, “I told you so.” Indeed. It’s just against decorum to say it. But it’s also against decorum to shut people up for asking questions or spreading actual truths. So, “I told you so,” but from my very obscure platform, you probably only noticed that I told you because you already agree and just wanted more links to data.

I don’t immediately see why I was able to detect the lies and find the truth, which was pretty readily available if you looked for it, instead of listening to legacy media and/or government spokesperson resources. I’m typically conservative, in temperament and personality. I don’t set out to be a disrupter, although I do tend to be stubborn about seeking and speaking the truth. I am college educated but not decorated with multiple degrees or credentials. I’m religious, and look to do what is right in my own family and in the community. All of these things look like I would be most likely to do what people do to go with the prevailing opinions—and yet I did not.

I have known people with much education who fell for the lies (and still do, it seems, maybe even regardless of the report). I have met religious people—people in my own religion, who went along with everything, while others didn’t fall for a bit of it. It seemed to me those who call themselves liberals were more likely to fall for the lies than those who call themselves conservative, but that wasn’t universal either. (Bret Weinstein and his wife, Heather Heying, on their Dark Horse podcast let us watch as they were red-pilled over this issue—as scientists who were looking at the actual data and being cancelled for doing so.)

Back in October of 2021 I heard Mattias Desmet talk about Mass Formation. It was finally an explanation for why some people fell for the lies and others did not. He talks about four conditions that, when met, could lead to the mass believing of a cult-like lie:

1. a lot of people experiencing a lack of social bonds, a lack of social connectedness.

2. a lot of people who experience a lack of meaning making.

3. a lot of people who experience a lot of free-floating anxiety.

4. a lot of free-floating frustration and aggression.

Until the shutdown, I was not lacking in social bonds, and throughout that time I had family, plus a fair amount of online connection. So maybe that saved me. I also have a fair amount of meaning making in my life; it’s just who I am and what I do. I do have some anxiety, and I’d call it free-floating mostly. It’s a condition where my heart races and my blood pressure drops (POTS), which feels like anxiety attacks when it happens. But I’ve learned to step back, recognize whether there’s an actual cause, or just that sense of anxiety for no reason that I can ignore until it goes away. And I wouldn’t say I have a whole lot of frustration and aggression. But it also isn’t apparent to me that this is the case for those who fell into the Mass Formation. Some of them I would call worriers (I recognize that in myself, though, as well). And some are more emotion-based, while I am probably more logic-based.

Maybe one difference was my long-time practice of reading a lot of different sources and making connections and thinking things through. It’s what I do here in this blog. More information is always better, and I find I rarely go to standard news sources, even Fox, anymore.

At this point, I’ll mention a few ongoing sources.

· Tom Woods, who kept daily track of data and turned it into the book Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania.

· RFK Jr’s book The Real Anthony Fauci was also eye-opening and remains pretty much unchallenged.

· I started following Dr. John Campbell’s podcast on YouTube somewhere along the line, and watched him lose faith in the medical experts in real time. He continues to bring out valuable information. This includes recent reports concerning excess deaths— which didn’t appear to be significant in 2020, but did show up in 2021 after the vaccines were given.

· Another good data source, particularly on excess deaths, is Edward Dowd. His Substack is here, with links below to previous articles and videos.

· And of course I continue to trust Dr. Peter McCullough.

· And Dr. Robert Malone (here’s a recent video).

Pretty much every one of these reliable sources has been maligned by the medical “experts” and media who were lying to us all along.

One last word about all this: If they lied, and were willing to have people die to serve their own interests, what else do “they” (experts, government, elites, etc.) lie to us about? I assume there are a great many things that will need similar 500-page reports to come out.

flatten the curve graphic that was meant
to convince us to lockdown for two weeks

My Pandemic Collection

I don’t think that I’ve ever done a “collection” of my posts on the pandemic, which might, it turns out, to be a subject I’ve covered more than any other. So, for the sake of history, here it is, with heaviest coverage in the first and second year. In reviewing these, there were some details we didn’t know in the very beginning (like the certain knowledge that we should never have trusted Fauci, which we came to know a few months later). But I’m fairly pleased to see that I was asking the right questions and looking for the right information from the beginning, and applying the principles of freedom even in (especially in) a time of crisis. Many of these link to the resources I used, which I hope are still active links. This may not be exhaustive (but it looks pretty exhausting, and I don’t expect anyone to go back and read them all), but in an age in which there was so many lies told, I think it’s important to have a contemporaneous record.

· From Home, March 16, 2020

· Look to Literature, March 19, 2020

· Crisis Legislation, March 23, 2020

· Innovation, March 26, 2020

· The Classic Trio: Emotion, Logic, Action, March 30, 2020

· Encouraging Words, April 6, 2020

· Worldwide Unity, April 9, 2020

· Unrighteous Dominion, April 13, 2020

· Tyranny's Body Count Rises, April 16, 2020

· Federalism Works—Even in a Crisis, April 20, 2020

· Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease? April 23, 2020

· Open to Hope, April 27, 2020