Trying to Make Sense of What Makes No Sense

This past Friday the second person I knew died of COVID-19. She was someone I had only met a few times. But one of them was two days before her positive COVID test. Before the COVID shutdown I played in a jam session every Tuesday night, and then in a monthly group elsewhere on Saturdays. She was the newly elected president of the monthly group. We hadn’t been playing together in person for either group since the 2020 shutdown (with the exception pictured below). But with things looking very good in July, several of us tried meeting in a home on a couple of Tuesday nights (the church where we used to meet was no longer available). Some wore masks. Most were probably vaccinated. I’m at the younger end, so many are high risk just because of age. But not the friend who died. I'm pretty sure she was younger than I am.

Some of us got to play, outdoors, at this year's Katy Folklife Festival

Her illness was after just our second jam session, and we haven’t met since. No one else at the music jam either spread it or got it. I sat probably closest to her; I shared my music with her for a couple of pieces. I remain fine.

She was vaccinated.

She went into ICU on August 2^nd. In our monthly newsletter a week ago, she had given us an update. It sounded like she was improving, albeit way too slowly, so she was asking for a temporary reprieve from her president duties until she could get back on her feet. And she mentioned how they kept telling her, “Imagine how bad off you’d be if you hadn’t been vaccinated.” She was a bit overweight, but not seriously so; I’m unaware of any other possible co-morbidities.

I found myself angry about it. How could this happen to her—unless they didn’t give her known treatments?

 

This Makes No Sense

Most deaths—and most hospitalizations—are preventable with early treatment. And those early treatments ought to be available for the many vaccinated “breakthrough” cases too.

There’s something so strange about insisting on everyone being vaccinated—with a “vaccine” they had to redefine the word to include, a “vaccine” that doesn’t give immunity but simply creates an increase of some antibodies. Something so ineffective that you’re expected to still wear a mask afterward—and you’re still supposed to be deathly afraid of the unvaccinated you might walk past—despite the inability of people who are not sick to spread the illness to anyone, let alone to the vaccinated. Why?

And what about the unvaccinated who have natural immunity? Latest studies put their immunity as 27 times  more powerful than the vaccinated (this number keeps going up; in August it was thought to be 6 times more). Yet you’re supposed to be afraid of these naturally immune? And insist that they get a vaccine for the safety of the greater society? That makes no sense.

So much about this pandemic doesn’t make any sense.

There has never been a vaccine before for people with natural immunity. You don’t give mumps vaccine to people who had mumps, or chicken pox vaccine to kids who had chicken pox. And you never gave small pox vaccines to people who survived small pox. The idea was to give them something close enough to small pox but less deadly, cow pox for example, so their body’s immune system would fight off small pox. The annual flu shot may look like an exception, but the flu virus changes seasonally into a whole new flu virus. The vaccine is developed to combat the new virus as it appears in one hemisphere of the world, so the new vaccine will be ready for use when it appears in the other hemisphere.

This coronavirus vaccine is aimed at the original form of the virus, which has disappeared from the public, and the vaccine fails more consistently with each new variant. Meanwhile people who have had the disease and therefore have natural immunity are being forced to get the vaccine—to qualify for employment, travel, and other rights of society. That makes no sense.

We have never before required vaccinations for the safety of someone other than the person getting the vaccine. That’s true for adults or children. But why are we vaccinating children, who hardly ever got the virus in its original form and now only get the illness in variant form, usually very mild cases, rarely requiring hospitalization and almost never die from it? (And if given effective treatment, maybe they never die?) Chance of death or injury from the vaccine far outweighs chance of death or injury from the virus. So, are we making that risk choice for them to satisfy the fear of some adult?

Dr. Scott Atlas says, “To me it is unconscionable that a society uses its children as shields for adults. So we’re going to inject our children with an experimental drug that they don’t have a significant benefit from to shield ourselves.” 

Also, we’ve never before required a “vaccine” for something that is highly treatable—and often so mild that treatment isn’t even necessary.

 

More About Treatments

Monoclonal antibodies have gotten headlines lately. Florida instituted clinics all over the place to make them available.

So Biden comes out and declares that they must be rationed; states like Florida and Texas shouldn’t get all they want. Presumably because these states don’t have vaccination mandates and are therefore on the naughty list. But if you look at Florida, their vaccination rates for the elderly are very high, and their overall vaccination rates are above the national average. It’s the lack of mandate that offends the president.

I have a friend here in Texas recovering from COVID-19 now. She printed out Dr. Peter McCullough’s protocol to take with her to the urgent care center. They were impressed. They hadn’t heard of Dr. McCullough (whose protocol, published spring 2020, is the most downloaded medical article from the New England Journal of Medicine in history, so that’s odd), but they agreed with his recommendations and said they aligned with how they were treating. They put in a request for monoclonal antibodies for my friend, but she was turned down because her BMI wasn’t high enough. I think that means they’re saving them for people with co-morbidities such as obesity. She is at a healthy weight, in her 50s, eats a nutritious diet, and is otherwise healthy. She did have a couple of days in the hospital with some odd symptoms, but her oxygen levels remained high. And now we hope it’s just a matter of getting fully recovered.

The Houston Methodist hospital system website had this—so it may have been that way even before the Biden limits:

from the Houston Methodist website on monoclonal antibody treatment

The website also added that a common side effect is an allergic reaction, so that probably disqualifies me yet again.

Do you know where monoclonal antibodies come from? From people who had the disease and therefore have natural antibodies. The antibodies in their blood can be used. This treatment has been used for COVID-19 for more than a year now. President Trump was given this treatment when he had COVID-19 last fall. But the blood of people who have had the vaccine can’t be used. I’ve heard two things: they don’t have enough antibodies to be useful for this purpose; and/or the spike protein mRNA in the vaccine is a dangerous additive to an otherwise safe treatment—like using a blood transfusion from someone with AIDS or hepatitis: bad idea.

An interesting treatment for long-haul COVID-19 is giving us a possibly more thorough understanding of the disease.

Dr. Mobeen Syed talked with Dr. Tina Peers, a British doctor, who saw a pattern, made some mental connections, and started a clinic. It appears that treatment for MCAS (mast cell activation syndrome) works also for COVID-19. Doctors are surmising that those who get these long cases possibly already have MCAS, or maybe the disease triggers MCAS in certain patients.

MCAS as a condition has only been well recognized for maybe a decade and a half. Most doctors get about a minute of training in their years of medical school related to mast cells, and that relates to another, rare condition, and they’re told they’ll probably never see a case. So they don’t look for it. But MCAS is not that rare; some estimates are that about 17% of the population have it, with it being more prevalent in women.

Dr. Peers made the connection in an effort to help her very ill daughter. Her daughter’s issues were many, and diverse, and hard to treat and identify. But when Dr. Peers finally learned about MCAS, she had a sort of aha moment, and that wide array of symptoms tied together.

Dr. Peers’ specialty was in women’s reproductive health, but she found that a great many women would come in with these long histories of symptoms that hadn’t been successfully treated or well managed. After seeing enough of them, she recognizes them clinically, even without testing—which is possible, but not easily available in her country. Specimens have to be kept chilled from the time they’re taken, and on through the centrifuge process; a lab has to be very particular to make certain of that care, including during shipping to the testing lab.

I may ask my doctor about it at my next appointment. My 30-year-old diagnosis (among other things) of chronic fatigue, which means chronic undiagnosed illness, might actually get a meaningful label. Meanwhile, it looks like I’ve been doing a lot of right things all along—certain supplements that strengthen the immune system and lower inflammation, and a low-histamine diet. I looked up Dr. Peers online and found the low histamine diet she refers to. It will look daunting to someone who hasn’t done an elimination diet for food allergies before, but for me it’s pretty similar to my everyday diet.

As related to COVID-19, it appears that what is happening is a histamine overresponse. So you can treat with antihistamines, trying what works best among a list of H1 blockers and H2 blockers. I’m still hunting for a full accurate list, but montelukast (the generic of Singulair) was mentioned by name, and also levocerterizine (Xyzal, which is OTC), promethazine, cetirizine, and there are others.

When I wrote “Have a Plan” in August, I mentioned Dr. Shankara Chetty, in rural South Africa, who has a protocol for treating COVID-19 in a country where facilities, medicines, and treatments were limited. He found that patients often had a turning point around day 8, if they were going to get bad. Up until then, he was treating with ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine when he could get them. At this point he would add an antihistamine, and anti-inflammatories, possibly a steroid if that became necessary. He has treated over 5,000 COVID-19 patients and had zero patients need a hospital, and zero deaths. He observed symptoms and  was treating for what looked like a histamine overreaction, and it appears he was right.

Dr. Mobeen Syed has a protocol for long-haul COVID-19, and his also seems to coincide with what Dr. Peers was sharing with him. The MCAS connection is just a new way of describing what is happening, and it offers a broader approach to treatment.

For easy access:

·       Here is Dr. Mobeen Syed’s interview with Dr. Tina Peers. 

·       Here is the low-histamine diet and other info on MCAS treatment, which also works for long-haul COVID-19. 

·       Here is another Dr. Mobeen Syed interview, this one with Dr. Lawrence Afrin, who is the leading doctor on MCAS worldwide., who has also noticed the connection to treating lang-haul COVID-19. 

·       Here is Dr. Mobeen Syed’s protocol for long-haul COVID-19, in collaboration with Dr. Tina Peers and others, with the FLCCC. 

 

More to Think About

Joshua Philipp of Crossroads, for EpochTV, interviewed Gary Miliefsky, a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security and publisher of Cyber Defense Magazine. The far-ranging conversation covered several vaccine oddities.

Joshua Philipp (left) interviews Gary Miliefsky on Crossroads
screenshot from here

Miliefsky talked about the way the vaccines work, and the mRNA “platform” they are created on. He used the analogy of a football team. Your body’s immune system is one team, and the virus is the opponent. The vaccine retrains your team members to be specialists against that particular opponent—and no other. Soon all 11 players on the field are fighting off this same opponent. But as soon as you play another team, you’re in trouble.

Another analogy—this time from the cyber world. He suggested it was like anti-virus software that targets a particular bug, like the WannaCry virus that affected hospitals in England, for example. The vaccine is like virus software that targets this specific WannaCry virus—and none other. So your anti-viral software goes along targeting only this one thing, and reporting that all is well—while it’s letting in any other virus, trojan horse, or malware that comes along. And your computer gets sluggish, and slow, and stops working. But, hey, it’s fighting off that WannCry virus, so all is well, right?

He says you could get, say, a cold or flu after taking the virus, but your immune system is prepped to target coronavirus. There is less of your immune “team” left to fight off these other things. Your natural immune system is compromised; it’s weaker overall because of the vaccine.

And, I’ll add, the outcome is that it doesn’t even fight off the coronavirus very well. High cost/low return.

Miliefsky went through some info about Bill Gates. Miliefsky is a cyber security expert, so computers are his world. And he used to admire Bill Gates; it seemed like everyone did. And then he found out Bill Gates’s dad was a founder of Planned Parenthood and was a eugenicist. And Bill Gates, when he and wife Melinda started a foundation, it was called the Population Reduction Foundation; but when they saw that name didn’t go over well, they renamed it the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Miliefsky says,

So population reduction, he describes it all the time. “There’s just too many people on earth. We have to save the planet. And we’re doing a great job with vaccines, healthcare reproductive services, and contraceptives.” And that’s a quote-end quote from Bill Gates to millions of people. You can find it on YouTube.

So when they say there’s another pandemic coming, I’m just going to look for Event 202.

He was referring to whatever will be the next step after Event 201, (I mentioned it here) which he said was still viewable online. He’s right; it’s still there. This is the pandemic response scenario run-through done in New York in October 2019—immediately before the outbreak in Wuhan, China, of an eerily similar reality. (This is in addition to a similar pandemic response plan agreed to in the September 2019 GPMB conference a month or so earlier, which was part of The New Normal Plan.)

Anyway, having someone run this who is both highly inventive and believes in severely shrinking the population (killing off billions of people) is alarming.

And Gates is involved in the development of vaccine technology. That’s troubling. 

from Bill Gates Twitter feed, December 19, 2019

Another oddity of the vaccine is the inclusion of graphite, or graphene, some metallic-like substance. Miliefsky postulates that its purpose is to make a person trackable, or scannable.

screenshot from here

And he shows the evidence. About patentable gene sequencing, he points out that Bill Gates, or rather Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, owns patent # WO2020060606 for a cryptocurrency system using body activity data. (He shows a picture of the patent on the screen. I looked it up and found it here.) He describes the patent as saying, the more people take the vaccine, the more you can scan them, because of the graphite, graphene, or metallic substance in them. And this could be used in a way similar to bar scanning your groceries, and could be applied to cryptocurrency. They scan a person doing work, and then apply payment through cryptocurrency, based on the work he was scanned doing. He says,

This patent is associated with mRNA patents. So you’ve got one patent on creating cryptocurrency based on people’s work product tied to a vaccine. And then you’ve got patents on vaccines that are created using messenger RNA. And the Supreme Court ruled, if a vaccine is patented, will the DNA of a human be patentable? No. But will the synthetic DNA, the DNA modified, the new DNA as a result of modified mRNA be patentable? The answer is yes.

Miliefsky doesn’t mention this, but this does appear to be where people draw conspiracy conclusions: WO = world order / 2020 is the year of the pandemic / 060606 = 666. Coincidence? Again, I have no way of knowing for certain. I just keep getting more questions.

But I’m concerned that, whoever is making decisions, they aren’t all that interested in fighting this virus, keeping people alive, or getting them well. Whoever is making decisions wants more people to take more vaccines, regardless of safety or efficacy. And they’re willing to let hundreds of thousands of people die to get that to happen.

Something that strange leads us to look for a logical explanation. But I don’t have an explanation, other than there’s a lot of human-caused evil in the world today.

No, We Haven’t Evolved Beyond Our Constitution

This past week the Constitution turned 234 years old, signed September 17, 1787. I’d like to take a look at how well it is aging.

"Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States" by Howard Chandler Christy
image found on Wikipedia

Back in the day, there were some things our founders probably couldn’t have imagined: cars, subways, trains, airplanes, rockets to space, satellites, electricity, lightbulbs, radio, telephones, television, computers, cell phones, internet. I was alive for the landing on the moon. I went through college doing term papers with the footnotes at the bottom of the page—where I had to roll the paper down to the right location on the typewriter to type the note, then roll back up to type the rest of the page, and hope it all fit. If it didn’t, I’d have to type the whole page over, correcting any errors with white out (a little bottle of white paint you brushed on over the typo). When we got really advanced, we used erasable bond paper, which smeared badly, so you had to be really careful, and then you had to get a Xerox copy to turn in, because teachers didn’t like the thin texture of the paper or the smearing.

Computers were around, even when I was in high school (or before), but they were large, room-sized devices that you fed programming cards into. Personal computers came out, in rudimentary forms, shortly after college.

illustration of technological progress found here

I remember one person with a mobile phone during college. It was connected to his car and was the size of a large brick, required a large antenna, and also did not have a very clear sound. I didn’t see a need for a cell phone until we moved to Houston in 1998. I didn’t have a “smart phone” until two phones ago (phone life is longer for me than for most at 3-5 years).

So all this technology surrounding us has changed. But have humans changed?

There’s a prejudice against older generations, a feeling of self-importance current generations have, where we think those people back then were primitive—not just technologically, but in their thinking as well. I think there’s a word for it, but I can’t come up with it right now. Presentism is close, the assumption that past generations are bad for not holding the same cultural morals as are held in present culture. But that’s not quite it.

Anyway, while we may think we’re better for all our technological advances, there have been tradeoffs. We’ve mostly let go of basics, like how to sustain ourselves during a famine, or how to treat ourselves in the absence of a hospital, or how to dispose of waste. Maybe even how to make cheese. Specialization has meant letting go of general knowledge, much of which was widely known by past generations but has been lost to us. Think about something as simple as going to the bathroom, where we find easy access to toilet paper and soap and water. I’ve experienced camping, but I bring along comforts of home, plus maybe some hand sanitizer.

The point is, technology doesn’t equal human advancement. Humans are still human. Even evolutionists talk in time lengths of millions of years, not the mere handful of millennia of recorded history. Humans today are flawed in the same ways as our ancestors—but maybe with the technology to spread the harm further.

So, here’s what our founding fathers—and all wise people throughout history—knew about human nature: Humans are imperfect. Among the imperfections are:

·         Pride

·         Selfishness

·         Deceitfulness

·         Manipulation

·         Cheating

·         Greed

·         Thievery

·         Prejudice

·         Short-temperedness

·         Impatience

·         Laziness

·         Tendency toward violence

·         Lust

·         Power mongering

I haven’t covered them all, of course. But they include the problems brought up in the Ten Commandments. They include the 7 Deadly Sins. They include human weakness depicted in stories, and from life over the centuries—regardless of what technology the people may have had. Ancient Greeks and Romans faced the same human weaknesses. So did people through the Dark Ages and the Renaissance. And in Ancient Israel, Ancient China, Ancient India, or Ancient anywhere.  

portraits of Greek philosophers Sokrates, Antisthenes, Chrissipos, and Epikouros
in the British Museum

The last one on that list, power mongering, is particularly important when we’re talking about government. There’s a scripture used in my faith to warn against abuse of power:

We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. (Doctrine & Covenants 121:39)

James Madison put it this way in Federalist No. 51,

If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government that is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Mark Twain said it this way, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Chapter 10, “Beginnings of Civilization”:

Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. But as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible.

Humans are flawed. Even (especially) in 2021. If you’re looking at some human evolution since 1787, you’re probably not going to find any measurable progress. At all.

People are not angels. Until they are, there needs to be limits placed on the authority anyone is granted.

The question is, then, is there any reason to think the Constitution is outdated? Insofar as it addresses ways to protect us from human flaws like lust for power, then, no; it is definitely not outdated.

The Constitution, which we’re celebrating, is an instrument for limiting government in a way intended to give individuals as much freedom as possible while limiting their ability to harm one another—which is what government is instituted to do.

The Preamble is the mission statement. As opposed to the loosely governing Articles of Confederation, which weren’t doing their necessary governing job, the Constitution was set up by “We the People of the United States”:

In Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….

Constitution detail, image from Wikipedia

The first purpose is to get the separate states more unified, to do the things a nation needs to be able to do—things like make treaties with other nations, establish trade with other nations, keep the peace among the member states, etc.

General Welfare does not mean a national-level charity giveaway program. It means promoting what is in the best interest of the nation as a whole, rather than favoring one state or region over another.

Does every nation have to have an identical constitution to this one in order to flourish? Not necessarily. But what they would have to do is meet the principles—the ways of dividing and balancing power so that the good could be done that needs doing by a federal government, while leaving freedom to the people and the local jurisdictions.

Our three branches of government separate the lawmaking duties, the executive duties (i.e., the carrying out of the laws), and the judicial duties (i.e., the judging according to the laws). And the lawmaking duties are further divided into state representation in the upper chamber and population representation in the lower chamber, which have to deliberate and come to agreement on any laws enacted. It's not meant to be easy.

Around this time of year last year, I wrote a 4-part series on the Constitution, with an introduction and then covering the first three articles:

·       Try Reading the Constitution, Part I 

·       Part II: Article I—Legislative Branch 

·       Part III: Article II—Executive Branch 

·       Part IV: Article III—Judicial Branch 

The point here was that the Constitution is readable and understandable—no lawyer or judge needed to interpret it. And we ought to be reading it and understanding it.

It’s hard to know at this point whether We the People will be able to take corrective action so that our country will once again be governed by our basic law, the Constitution. There are so many egregious violations right now. And the laws are only good for a people that respect them and adhere to them. Otherwise we just have tyranny of the most powerful—as most of historical mankind has had to deal with.

As with the treatments available for a certain virus, treatments for our beloved Constitution on life support are denied, as though they don’t exist. We may have to start small—at our school board races, and our local government. Stop tyranny there by our constant vigilance. And then work with others to stop tyranny at every level all the way up.

We’re going to have to be better, to overcome our human flaws, so we merit the help I hope God is willing to give. I believe He’s willing to give it, because He gave the help to our founders back in 1787 to come up with this Constitution. It’s a miraculous governmental instrument that leads to freedom, prosperity, and civilization—every time good people try it.

The Critical School Board Races, Part II

In Part I we talked about what we’re fighting in our current school board races, and also who we’re fighting. Today we’ll talk more about who we’re fighting with—who are the candidates to vote for.

Where the school board meetings are held
image from Google maps

A bit of background. I pulled my kids out of this school district, Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, 21 years ago to homeschool. We had a 9^th grader, 7^th grader, and 2^nd grader at that point. This means we’d been parents of public school students for 10 years (kindergarten plus 9 grades), so we hadn’t been against all public schooling. We had, in fact, had some very good public school experiences—before moving here. By spring of our second school year here we’d had enough. Despite a few teachers who meant well and tried hard, and a music teacher we felt honored to have experienced, the schools at all three levels did not meet the needs of our kids, all of whom qualified as gifted, which by the way is a form of special education that often gets overlooked. You need to teach these kids not only more, but in a different way. Our previous school district had done that very well, so we knew what that looked like.

We chose this district because of its high rating—it still has a high rating. But by comparison it felt backward, stodgy, and, well, stupid. Some infuriating rules made me think, No one this stupid should be allowed anywhere near the education of students.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of decent teachers trying to do a good job for the students they love. And for many families that is enough. But it does mean the leadership overall isn’t what it ought to be.

So we pulled our children out—and educated them at our own expense and effort, which meant limiting the income of our family. We had to pay tax money for the schools that had failed our kids. And I’m telling you it still infuriates me when someone says, “I believe in public schools,” as if it’s a religion. Or, “Our tax money is for public school students only; if someone chooses something else, fine, but this is where the tax money goes.”

After pulling our kids out, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to our school district, except to try to be an informed voter on school board races. But this year has gotten my attention.

screenshot from a recent school board meeting

Last spring people started asking the school board why certain things were being taught—things that could fit under the ideological umbrella of Critical Race Theory. I don’t care whose kids are being educated; I don’t want my tax dollars to go toward inculcating that divisive and America-hating ideology.

So that meant looking at changing out the school board. The district uses a nonpartisan no-runoff ballot; whoever gets the most votes wins. That favors the incumbent. The timing is in an off year. This year on our ballot there is nothing but school board and the state propositions. It’s traditionally very low turnout. But the incumbents can put out student and teacher handouts reminding them to go vote in the school board election. So the people most likely to vote for an incumbent—because they’ve heard of them—are more likely to vote. That’s a lot to go up against.

But we’ve had some energetic people working to find candidates, vet them, and campaign for them. I’ve been joining in that effort. I’m pleased with our choices. Now we just have to get people who care about kids and our country to get out and vote.

The Endorsements

OK. So, who should we vote for?

There are three races, positions 5, 6, and 7. These are all at-large. In other words, everyone in the district votes for all of the positions. While this is nonpartisan, voting history as well as actions can tell us something about the candidates and incumbents. The precinct chairs doing the vetting only considered Republicans, because that at least gives us a common starting place.

Last night the Harris County Republican Party voted to endorse:

·         Dr. Natalie Blasingame for position 5.

·         Scott Henry for position 6.

·         Luke Scanlon for position 7.

image from campaign literature

That’s kind of a big deal. And it wasn’t easy to accomplish. Normally that body doesn’t endorse during primaries. But this doesn’t have a primary. And in our district it doesn’t have a runoff. So the Local Government Committee did their vetting and interviewing of candidates (this is in addition to the vetting we precinct chairs in the district had been doing). The Republican incumbents in positions 6 and 7 didn’t show, so it was easy to endorse the challengers. I told a little about these two in Part I. I've got some yard signs for Scott Henry in my car if you want one.

But position 5 was harder. For position 5 there are actually six candidates, 2-3 of them are Republican (depending on how you read their voting history). The incumbent is the divisive ultra-Democrat we talked about in the last post, the one who tweeted out racist anti-white, anti-any-religion-but-his, tweets pretty regularly. (There's a sampling in Part I.) So he’s the biggest target. The LG Committee knew that, but didn’t want to set up a situation where they endorsed a candidate and then a different candidate got traction in the race. I also hope that doesn’t happen. But if we didn’t act, it was very unlikely we could coalesce around a candidate to beat the incumbent.

So we had to amend their recommendation and make the case for endorsing Natalie Blasingame. I had my 1 minute of fame giving one of the speeches. A friend, Bill Ely, had done the work of getting a whip count of the precinct chairs in our school district:

o   76 precincts, 74 precinct chairs

o   4 Abstain

o   3 for Courtney Spradley

o   50 for Natalie Blasingame

o   17 not reported

o   68% of all precinct chairs support Blasingame

o   94% of reporting precinct chairs support Blasingame

Add to that, we got an additional short speech from a member of the LG Committee, from outside our district, who said Natalie Blasingame was the most impressive and prepared school board candidate he had ever met. By far.

There’s another election for CFISD Board Trustees in two years, where four positions will be on the ballot. I hope some of the candidates who didn’t get our full support this time will consider running then. 

Natalie Blasingame has run before. More than once. I voted for her in 2015, 2017, and 2019. This is the first time she has run with grassroots support, and that's happening because of the attention to CRT in our schools—a topic she not only opposes but can recognize. It's about time we elected her.

The Stakeholders Question

There’s a question I like to ask school board candidates, about the priority of stakeholders. Dr. Blasingame is the first one who really seemed to understand. Her answer, paraphrased from my notes: Parents are the first stakeholders, including community members who are not currently parents of our students.

Students are not stakeholders; students are the why, the reason we have schools. Our school board doesn’t take orders from students, although it should listen to them to find out how well our schools are doing. We need to meet each child’s individual needs.

She didn’t mention teachers as stakeholders either. They’re not; they are the employees we hire to accomplish our mission to “produce graduates who have skills, knowledge and attitudes to become accomplished citizens.*” The district words their stated vision and mission this way:

Our vision at CFISD is formed by the acronym LEAD: to learn, empower, achieve, dream. LEAD.

Our mission is to maximize every student’s potential through rigorous and relevant learning experiences, preparing students to be 21^st Century global leaders.

I'm not sure every student ought to be a world leader; an accomplished citizen will do. Anyway, as I ask the priorities question, it’s amazing to me how many school board candidates think they should do what the teachers want—not realizing that often means the teachers’ unions, or maybe some pressure group selling something or promoting an ideology. Often candidates think they’re giving an understanding answer when they say the children are the priority stakeholders, even though we know that’s not who they’re listening to. Natalie understands this better than any candidate I’ve asked.

The Choice Issue

My other big issue is school choice. Public schools are not an end unto themselves; they are a means toward an end. We pay our property taxes not to fund public schools, but to fund the education of the next generation. That means the taxes are meant to go for the education of every child—as their parents see fit.

I said that to Natalie, and she said, “Exactly.” She is full of creative ideas to meet needs—according to what parents want for their child. She’s had to do some creative work to get what she needed for her own daughter when the schools wouldn’t provide what she wanted.

And every child is different. You might manage a factory aiming at the middle and eliminating the exceptions. But you can’t get every child to reach their potential that way. She’s more than about attaching the money to the child; she’d first like to offer creative ideas within the school system—since that’s what the school’s mission is supposed to be. Then, if the schools can’t come up with a way to meet a family’s needs, that’s when you give them the money to get what they need.

One of the innovations she’d like to try is strands. You could have a teacher and parents of enough students who all ask for, say, a Christian strand. All willing, the schools provide the place and the support, and the parents get what they want from a teacher who gets to teach what she/he wants. You could do strands for STEM, or technology, or language immersion. Not every student wants to have these things, but why not offer them for those who do? We have classrooms. The cost per student and per teacher is essentially the same. What’s stopping us?

Dr. Blasingame has been a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and assistant superintendent. Some people might worry about having an insider, but in this case I don’t think that’s a problem. She’s an out-of-the-box thinker who happens to know how the system works. And she knows where the system doesn’t work.

She’s committed to improving communication between the board and the community. Right now that’s pretty dismal. But she says you can form a committee for anything you want information on, so that puts you in touch with the community. You just have to want that two-way communication.

When she says she’s about Choice, Voice, and Values, I believe her.

Now we just have to get to work, get the word out, and get people to the polls.

________________

* The quote comes from The Eden Conspiracy, by Joe Harless. I wrote about it here.

The Critical School Board Races, Part I

School board fights are going on across the nation. What does that mean? It means that people don’t want their children indoctrinated with ideologies at odds with their family’s values. They just want kids to be taught to read, write, do math, and think. They don’t want them inducted involuntarily into some wrong-headed social experiment.

So, we’re having that fight here in my school district in northwest Houston. To be clear, this highly rated school district failed my family over 20 years ago—which led to our decade of homeschooling. The kids are all grown, all graduated from college, and have all gone on to post-graduate education. To the person who commented a warning a while back that homeschooling my children was appalling, because of the way I think, and that I would ruin them for the real world—you’re too late. And you’re also wrong.

What is happening in our schools? Some good things, but way too many unacceptable things.

Langham Creek High School, in Cy-Fair ISD
image from Google Maps

 

What We’re Fighting

The current big concern is about Critical Race Theory. Let’s define the term so we’re on the same page. Critical Race Theory is an adaptation of Critical Theory, out of Marxism. In the original, it was an attempt to pit social classes against one another, to stir up the lower classes to empower the elites to take rights and property away from the relatively successful: the bourgeoisie, or the kulaks, depending on your language.

But that was a hard sell in America—because we have a great deal of class mobility. Most Americans who start out in a lower economic class do not stay there throughout their lives. They move up and down based on the increase in value they can bring to an employer, or to their entrepreneurial business. They’re not held down by the strata of their birth.

To the Marxists, that meant there needed to be another way: replace class/caste with race, and claim it’s unfair.

That has also been something of a hard sell, because America is based on—not a national heritage or land ownership, like other nations, but on the idea that all people are created equal before the law. This was at a time when every nation on earth thought slavery was just part of life. Some were slaves to others, and that was just their lot in life. America’s founders questioned that status quo, and challenged it. And they would have begun the country with slavery already outlawed if they could have persuaded enough of the populous to this new idea. Instead, it took most of an additional century and a bloody Civil War to get rid of that plague. But they paid the price and did it. And every country in the world that got rid of slavery (and not all have yet) did so because of that idea that all men are created equal.

Unfortunately, there were residuals of that abomination for yet another century, in the form of Jim Crow laws, by the same people who had been slaveholders. (Hint: they were all of the political party that starts with a D.) And so the Marxists—the ones who want to destroy our freedom, prosperity, and civilization—have tried rewriting and reframing our history to tell an entirely different story. That is, America is innately evil. It was founded on the idea of white supremacy, and every law and institution was put into place to support that idea. Therefore, now that we’re so much more enlightened than those evil white men of the past, we should be ashamed of our country, it’s Constitution, it’s institutions; we should destroy them all and start over to create a new Socialist utopia.

A tag-along idea is intersectionality, the idea that, the more victim groups you can claim to belong to, the greater your power ought to be. The “victimized” now get to oppress the “oppressors.” And the “oppressors” are born that way, based on accidents of birth, regardless of behavior or thought. So even our kindergarteners are guilty oppressors who ought to allow themselves to be oppressed by those with greater victim status.

Where teachers go to get indoctrinated in false history.

When you refer to the term Critical Race Theory, you’ll likely be told, “That’s not being taught here. In fact, that’s something that’s only taught in some college classes. Not here.” But the thing is, CRT isn’t a curriculum; it is an ideology, a way of thinking. So it shows up in various places where people who are CRT ideologues have had influence. It’s at all levels. And it is in our school district. It shows up in anti-bullying programs. It shows up in history courses. It shows up in teacher development magazines and programs that show, for example, “how to teach black boys,” as though they must be treated totally differently from other children.

Critical Race Theory is racist while claiming to be against racism. It is unjust while claiming to bring about justice. It is a lie.

Is that what you want our children to be taught about this nation they live in and are part of? I didn’t think so.

What can we do about it? Be aware, of course. Find out what our kids are being taught—check out the texts, ask questions, know the teachers. And let your desires be known. Disapprove loudly when necessary.

That’s the individual school/classroom level. The next level up is the school board.

 

Who We’re Fighting

So, let me introduce you to one of the school board trustees in Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District. His name is Dr. John Ogletree. He has been in his position since around 2005. He is a pastor. He is very influential. Since the first time I saw him at a candidate forum I saw that he favored educational ideas and practices that I knew didn’t work. Add to that, he seems to me to be arrogant and condescending. Oh, and, by the way, incidentally, he is black.

Dr. John Ogletree, screenshot from here

He has been putting out tweets, a public forum, that some members of our community have been collecting. Some of these may not still be there; he started taking them down when he signed up to run again this year. But here’s a list shared with the Board—and the public—at last week’s school board meeting:

·       “Yesterday’s Ku Klux Klan members are today’s police officers.”

·       “White Evangelicalism is nothing but slaveholder religion.”

·       Six Things That White People Say That Highlight Their Privilege.”

·       “Riots are the American way” (in reference to police killings).

·       “This country was built on bad theology with White men holding bibles!!!”

·       “Wesley Hunt… is a Trump Republican. Don’t be fooled. He may share our ‘hue’ but he doesn’t share our view! I said what I said.” [Wesley Hunt was a candidate for Congressional District 7 in 2020.]

·       “White Evangelicals… are complicit in Madness, Divisiveness, and Evil.”

·       “If you want to understand white privilege just watch the videos of the insurrection on the US Capital Grounds.”

·       “When will the white pulpit be as repulsed by the taking of an innocent Black life as it is by the taking of the life of an unborn fetus.”

This is an ideological person. He believes these things. And he has been influencing our local schools for nigh unto two decades.

Those of you who are just trying to take care of your families and your jobs and don’t have time to pay attention to all these details—this ought to get your attention. You either have to pull your kids out of school, or you need to take steps to correct the schools. And you can start by getting this guy out of his position of influence.

Fortunately, we have good candidates. As of today, there are 32 days until Early Voting, and 47 days until Election Day. So we’ve got to get the word out.

I’ve been joining with a number of other precinct chairs within the district (somewhere around 74 precincts). We’ve been hearing from candidates, talking with them, vetting them, for a couple of months now.

There are three races open this year. All seven of the board members signed a resolution last fall, committing to spending our taxpayer funds on an “equity audit.” If you’re familiar with CRT, then you may know that “equity” doesn’t mean “equality.” They have hijacked that word (they redefine many words) to mean “equal outcomes.” If you look at anything, and the outcome isn’t divided up exactly as the demographics, then the only possible reason must be systemic racism. So, they hired some company to look at the district and find unequal outcomes, and then they would then take advice on programs to implement to change the outcomes. If you have blacks doing less well on math tests, for example, it must be because of systemic racism. So you implement all kinds of “anti-racism,” which means racism against whites or any other successful group. And when the outcomes continue to yield bad math scores, you double down.

So we need all of the school board gone. Three this year, and the other four when their terms are up in two years.

Ogletree has run as a slate with Don Ryan (who has been in since 2000) and Bob Covey (who has been in since 2004). It’s a non-partisan race, but when we know the party, sometimes it tells us something. Ryan and Covey are nominal Republicans. I haven’t always voted against them. But this year it’s time to say no more.

Don Ryan has come to our Tea Party meetings. More than once. Just last month he came to participate in our candidate forum. He assures us there’s no CRT being taught in our district—against testimony from multiple parents. When confronted with Ogletree’s tweets, he says he has worked well with him and considers him a friend, and will continue to support him. The three are running again as a slate, with PAC money behind them. The ROC PAC—not sure of the meaning of the letters. People are speculating things like “really old codgers.” (OK, it's really for their last names: Ryan, Ogletree, and Covey.)

image from campaign materials

 

Who We’re Fighting With

Ryan (position 6) and Covey (position 7) each have only one Republican opponent. So the decision there is fairly simple. I’ll be voting for Scott Henry for position 6 and Luke Scanlon for position 7.

Scott Henry is a dad with still one child in the district. He’s a businessman and brings that view to the board, which I appreciate. Much of the board’s business is mundane money stuff, but it needs to be done well, by someone with the right values. He’s not, by the way, related to the Superintendent, whose last name is also Henry. (Some of us haven’t been too happy with him either.)

Luke Scanlon is the founder of our local Tea Party, back in I think 2011 when about seven of us met in a room at the BBQ restaurant that lets us meet there for free. After getting us started, he went off to Harvard’s public policy school. When he came back, I think I heard he ran for an office, but not in my area. And I had kind of lost track of him. It was good to catch up. He and his wife had been childless back in the day, but now they have a beautiful 6-year-old girl (he proudly showed me photos on his phone), which is why the interest in the school board position. He has his own business developing people in their businesses and in life goals. And he teaches a college class or two. He was only able to attend one of our candidate forums (conflicts with teaching a college class, mainly, which is ending here in a couple of weeks). But I liked his answers at the one I attended. Unfortunately, it’s not one that was recorded. I saw him and his wife again at last Thursday’s school board meeting.

There have been a number of good candidates for position 5; everyone wants to get rid of Ogletree. Unfortunately, that divides the votes in an election with no runoff. I hope those I’m not supporting this time will consider running in two years. They have a lot to offer.

I, along with a very large majority of the precinct chairs who have worked on this, am supporting Natalie Blasingame for position 5. She definitely has energy and passion about this. She has run before. I’ve voted for her before. Hopefully we have enough community support to get her elected this time.

Dr. Blasingame has been in education for 29 years, at multiple levels. She has three words to signify her campaign: Choice, Voice, and Values.

I’d like to go into more detail on our three choices, especially Dr. Blasingame. But that’s going to require a part II. In the meantime, there are videos of some of our candidate forums:

·         From our August 21 Forum for Precinct Chairs

o    Opening and Initial Question & Answer Session

o    Responses to Republican Platform and Precinct Chair Q&A

·         From our August 28 Tea Party Meeting  (membership required to view posts in the group)

o    Natalie Blasingame

o    Don Ryan

o    Todd LaCompte

o    Grace Horner

o    Courtney Spradley

o    Scott Henry

Also, I’m aware of a few of the candidate websites:

·         Natalie Blasingame www.natalieblasingame.com

·         Scott Henry www.ScottforCyfair.com

·         Blasingame, Henry, and Scanlon together www.cyfairisdelection.com

More to come in part II.