Wrapping Up the Year

2024 has been quite a year.

It has become something of a tradition to end the year with an explanation of the Spherical Model, an alternative to the right/left model of ideas. The Spherical Model is three dimensional, with freedom in the northern hemisphere and tyranny in the southern hemisphere, with east and west divided into levels of interest, from very local, to state or region, to nation, and on up to world. You can find explanations at these links:

·        The basics (medium version) 

·        The website (long version) 

·        The video (short version) 

The Political, Economic, and Social Spheres of the Spherical Model

For the rest of this post, we’ll whoosh through some of what happened in this very strange year, within the political, economic, and social spheres—and the interrelationships among those spheres.

 

Early in 2024

Last winter we were looking at a lot of censorship, and things that were just wrong. Prisoners were still being held because of J6, even nonviolent “offenders.” The first three posts in January point out some of these injustices:

·        Predicting the Future: More Bad or Good at Last, January 5, 2024 

·        What We Know Now, Three Years Later, January 12, 2024 

·        Censor, Indict, Execute, January 18, 2024 

Then there’s concern over the border. Texas Governor Abbott wrote a letter calling out the Biden administration for dereliction of duty in failing to secure the southern border, and declaring Texas’s right to self-defense. The Biden administration went about thwarting Texas’s efforts, which included cutting razor wire fencing. 

 

Primaries and Conventions

The intensity of an election year got well underway in February, with the Primary Elections here being held the first Tuesday of March. I had to campaign to maintain my precinct chair position; I’d never had a challenger before:

·        Primaries and Conventions in Texas, February 9, 2024 

·        Primary Ballot Picks, February 17, 2024 

·        Lowest Level Primary Election Campaign Debrief, March 8, 2024  

Right after the Primary Election, the convention season started, first with precinct conventions, then district (or county) conventions, and state and national levels. After three convention cycles of editing the state platform, I passed that duty along this year, and only helped a bit before and after the convention. So I was just a regular delegate at the state convention. I walk through one idea, school choice, through our district convention. (I spoke, but not very well, on this issue in the state platform education subcommittee in May.)

 

Nature: Eclipse, Derecho, and Hurricane Beryl

We had some signs and wonders this year. In April was the total eclipse, which we got to experience in Waco, in the path of totality.

The derecho went west to east, and Hurrican Beryl
went south to north, both right over us.

In May, a derecho (tornadic, straight-wind storm that traveled hundreds of miles) passed right over us. And in July, Hurricane Beryl also passed right over us; X marked the spot right over our house. But, except for being without power for 6 days in May, we were essentially unaffected, while roofs, trees, and fences were down all around us. No AC, no freezer/refrigerator can be life threatening in Texas temperatures; we had a small generator for the appliances, and I slept with an ice pack for the heat—and then left town after 5 days, for the state convention.

 

Presidential Election Season

It was a very strange presidential election season. Biden chose to run again, even though four years ago signs of dementia were already present. (Naomi Wolf wrote about this in her book, Facing the Beast, in which she talks about her ostracism for doing her job as a journalist and noticing Biden’s decline, which I wrote about in April.) In late June, Biden debated Donald Trump, and performed disastrously badly. The debate was before either national convention nomination, and was late in the evening, making it possible to speculate he was set up to fail in time to allow a substitute. Despite concessions to make things easier for Biden, he was obviously cognitively impaired.

The iconic moment of Donald Trump, after being shot in the ear,
before being ushered offstage, photo credit to Evan Vucci/AP

Two weeks later, an assassination attempt grazed President Trump’s ear, but he was miraculously spared. (A second assassination attempt was thwarted on September 15.) And a week later, July 21, despite protestations up through just the night before, Biden stepped away from the race (but not the presidency, supposedly) and endorsed Kamala Harris. She had never been anyone’s choice. But the Dems made a go of it, and tried to make their convention exciting. There was a debate, in which she did badly, but maybe not as badly as expected, because expectations were so low. Meanwhile, Trump did long-form podcasts all over the place, allowing many new demographics to see him without the filter of the lying media.

Trump won, handily, in November, allowing so many of us tyrannized ones a sigh of relief, and he immediately began announcing his plans. The world is responding as though he is already the president. Biden, when not vacationing, continues to mess around in the background, but ineffectually. He has tried yet again, illegally, to forgive school debt. He has pardoned his son Hunter, and a long list of violent felons, and commuted the sentences of all but three federal death-row inmates. And we can reasonably speculate that he is trying to start WWIII before he leaves office.

 

Prophecy and the Beasts of Revelation 13

The sea beast and the land beast of Revelation 13.
This image is part of a larger illustration comparing
the beasts in Daniel and Revelation, found here.

There have been some events we might tie to prophecy—or, if not, then simply gain understanding through metaphor—from the book of Revelation and some other Bible prophecies. This list starts with one in March 2023, and then there are these:

·        The Propaganda Beast, August 10, 2024 

·        Concerning News, September 28, 2024 

·        The Propaganda Beast Is in a Doom Loop, October 31, 2024 

One hopeful point from this last days speculation is that we might be seeing better times, at least here in the near future. There are evidences for such hopefulness—besides the Trump win, and DOGE, and some other great cabinet picks. In Argentina and El Salvador, for example, things have gotten better suddenly.  And maybe that gives us courage to try those drastic but needed changes here.

 

Education

I’ve written a few times this year on education, including on our local school board, which is working hard and doing well under some trying circumstances:

·        The Short Answer Is Fear, March 28, 2024 (which I mentioned above) 

·        How’s That New School Board Doing? May 11, 2024 

·        The Costs of Standing Strong, June 21, 2024 

·        Real Education Choice, August 1, 2024 

 

SCOTUS

Supreme Court illustration from Epoch Times

I wrote only once (but it was long) on the Supreme Court’s session, in early July. It wasn’t a bad year overall. That’s probably why the Biden administration threatened to pack the court—adding justices to get up to 13, for “balance.” It does not appear they have the will or ability to make good on such a threat. There was a lot about lawfare this year, but I won't list them today.

 

Understanding the Constitution and Related Philosophy

There were a few posts related to philosophy, or understanding the Constitution:

·        What Does Populism Mean? (This includes some explanation about the Spherical Model), August 30, 2024 

·        Preserving the Constitution Includes Knowing What’s In It, September 12, 2024 

·        The False Prophet of the Great and Abominable Church, October 11, 2024 

·        Get Used to Living in Zion, November 7, 2024 

 

I Got Censored

I wrote earlier this month (December 7) about the House Subcommittee Report on that illness that was going around in 2020 and beyond. I got censored. Literally, this blogging platform removed the post. It seemed safe to talk about what a House subcommittee put into an official document. But that was deemed “Misleading Content.” Oddly, I have written on this topic literally dozens of times (55 previous times, by my count), and only now, when it is clear that I was telling the truth and the media and medical experts were the ones putting out “misleading content”—only now am I censored. I reread what I wrote. I don’t see where I was either misleading or untruthful—or even careless. I cannot, therefore, “review” the content and make it align with their policy, since their policy seems to me to be both arbitrary and averse to the truth.

I have not widely advertised this blog. It gets read, but I would assume mainly by friends and their friends (and some random people from around the globe who happen upon it). Obscurity has, I thought, kept me away from censoring eyes. I am not told why this post caught their attention—and just as we are going into a new Trump era, where we have hope that censorship will be done away. I was simply told by the Blogger Team that “it was flagged for us to review,” and they have “determined that it violates our guidelines,” so they deleted it.

I do not want to lose the 1400+ posts I’ve written on this platform. With that as a priority, I will be looking for alternatives in the coming year.

 

Looking Forward

One of my current prayers is that things will be made right soon. It looks possible now, that this prayer may be granted, or at least begin to be granted, in the coming year. I expect to continue chronicling things as they unfold. The writing helps me understand what’s happening more clearly, and I hope it helps readers as well.

Celebrating His Coming

I enjoyed watching an Unshaken video going through Handel’s Messiah and listing all the ways that Jesus is referred to in that work, along with the scripture verses the words come from. Surprisingly, Messiah is only used in the title. The many other names all come from scriptures, most often Isaiah, I believe. I took those names and made a word cloud in the shape of a star. There are so many names, they’re mostly small here, to all fit, but they are all beautiful.

Another tribute to the many names we use for our Savior is a video from the several of the cast of The Chosen, from three years ago, talking about the names of God and their meanings. Here are the ones I was able to capture:

Adonai El-Roi               The God Who Sees Me

Jehovah Shalom             The Lord Is Our Peace

Jehovah Raah                The Lord Is My Shepherd

El Shaddai                    Almighty God

Emmanuel                    God With Us

As I'm enjoying the Christmas season, I also listened to Jonathan Cahn talking about the Bethlehem story. Most of these details I have heard over the years, but he puts them together beautifully. Bethlehem itself means house of bread in Hebrew. This is appropriate as the place where the Bread of Life came down from heaven to earth.

Jesus was born in a manger—a place of eating, for the animals. It was likely of stone, rather than wood, as is often depicted. Ahead of Passover, the newborn sacrificial lambs—the firstborn males without blemish—would be placed carefully in the manger, where they were swaddled in consecrated temple cloths to be inspected for blemishes. Bethlehem was the place in particular that the sacrificial lambs for the temple were raised. It is likely that the shepherds who saw the angels and were directed to seek the babe in the manger were the shepherds tending to the temple lambs.

a stone manger, image from Stone Manger—The Untold Story
of the First Christmas, by Jeffrey R. Chadwick

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was also the sacrificial lamb. It seems fitting that he would be born in Bethlehem, where the sacrificial lambs of Passover were born.

Bethlehem, just on the outskirts of Jerusalem, is still surrounded by shepherds and their flocks in the fields. It is where David watched over the sheep as a boy, and practiced his harp music, and honed his skill with a sling, which he’d used to protect the sheep, and later to protect the Israelites from the Philistine giant, Goliath. David became king, and it was through his lineage that Jesus Christ was born; if all had been right through the ages, Jesus would have been the literal heir to the throne and King of the Jews.

Bethlehem was small and insignificant, as was David, the youngest son of his righteous but mostly insignificant family. But as with David, we are told not to look on the outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7). Small and humble are qualities God works with to make great things come to pass.

Cahn also talks about the guell, or redeemer. There was a tradition that, if a man died childless, his brother or a close relative could marry his widow and provide a posterity for him. This was the case with Ruth and Boaz. Boaz, as well as the deceased husband of Ruth, the son of Naomi, to whom Boaz was a kinsman, was a descendant of King David. In the book of Ruth, we see that there is another kinsman who could have redeemed Ruth, but he chose not to and gave Boaz permission to be the redeemer. The place where Boaz redeemed Ruth happens to be Bethlehem.

As I understand it, another meaning of redeemer is one willing to pay the ransom price, if a wife is captured by an enemy. The promise to do this would be written in the betrothal contract, called the ketubah: the bridegroom would promise to redeem the bride if she were captured, because of his love and devotion to her.

Jesus Christ qualifies as the Redeemer of all of us, however you define it. He redeems us, to make our lives fruitful; He redeems us to save us from the captivity of sin.

I'd like to actually learn to paint someday, but in the meantime,
this is a little nativity painting I did for this year's Christmas card.

There’s a part, late in the video where Cahn talks about the Hebrew wedding tradition—one of my favorite things to study. He reminds us that the bridegroom needed to travel from his home to the home of the bride, to bring her back to his home with him. Christ came down from heaven, to our home here on earth, in order to bring us back to His home in heaven. I’m reminded of the second and third verses of the Christmas hymn “Once in Royal David’s City”:

2: He came down to earth from heaven,

Who is God and Lord of all,

And his shelter was a stable,

And his cradle was a stall;

With the poor, and mean, and lowly,

Lived on earth our Savior holy.

3: And our eyes at last shall see him,

Through his own redeeming love;

For that child so dear and gentle

Is our Lord in heav’n above,

And he leads his children on

To the place where he is gone.

            —words by Cecil Frances Alexander

May He lead us all home, to the place where He is gone.

Merry Christmas!

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.