Charts and Other Info

Today, once again, is about data and questions related to this virus that has messed up our lives for the past two years.

There’s a chart worth looking at:

from Alex Berenson's Substack

It shows data from Great Britain during the last week of December and first week of January. I got this in a regular email from libertarian Tom Woods, who has been providing a lot of COVID-19 data and commentary throughout the pandemic. The email is passing along info from Alex Berenson’s Substack. The Berenson post included similar charts from Scotland, Israel, and Denmark, all showing age makes more of a difference than vaccination status. And then Berenson comments,

Remember, these failures cannot be blamed on vaccine skepticism, or Tucker Carlson, or me. These countries are as close to fully vaccinated as it is possible to be.

If you think this is what you were promised a year ago—or six months ago, or even a month ago—I don’t know what to tell you. But the answer cannot be to do MORE of what has not worked.

He's right. But as I look at the Britain chart, I still have questions. It compares the raw numbers of unvaccinated to the vaccinated. But it doesn’t compare populations. You would need to know how many in the total population are vaccinated or unvaccinated at those various levels. Then you could do a per population comparison, for example per 10,000 or per million or whatever is appropriate. There are probably other studies that do that.

Even better, but I don’t know how to get this, would be data on how well the different cohorts do when exposed to the virus. You can’t really tell how effective a vaccine is if the vaccinated person isn’t exposed to the virus. Since you can’t purposely expose people, that study isn’t possible. So you have to extrapolate from general populations and assume there’s some sort of random or generalized exposure.

And, of course, the unvaccinated bucket contains both those who have gotten and recovered from the disease and those who haven’t contracted it yet. There’s an enormous difference between those two cohorts. Add in, as Dr. Mobeen Syed talked about January 27, there’s data showing that people in households with sick Covid patients but who do not also contract the disease—so they have definitely been exposed but don’t get sick—also show that they have antibodies. From some previous illness? From a highly tuned immune system that stopped the virus in its tracks before it could cause illness? More study needed. But it’s interesting. It’s not different from what we see in a great many other illnesses, where some people in the family get sick, but some resist illness.

There may always be more to learn. But it does look like we’re nearing the end of this pandemic. There are still some deaths happening, although more of a plateau than a rise. There are still some hospitalizations. But only a small fraction need oxygen or ventilators, and time in hospital is down from weeks to 3 to 5 days.

The number I don’t have is hospitalizations as a percentage of cases. Even during Delta, the number was about 1 in 100, of which somewhere above 90% recovered—while media had stirred the public to believe that 50% of cases went to the hospital and 50% or so of those died.

But now, the case numbers have skyrocketed. I look at my zip code to get a grasp on numbers, gathering numbers daily from the Harris County website. Through most of the pandemic, we’ve had active cases mostly below 100. Now we’re more than 10 times that number. Yet we have had no additional deaths since early December. The total number—through the entire pandemic—is between 36 and 38. We hit 36 on November 30; 37 on December 7; 38 on December 10. That was a pretty rapid rise, since we’d been averaging a bit over 19 days between additional deaths. But this was Delta, before Omicron took over.

But wait! We went back down to 37 on December 16, and down to 36 on December 17, then back up to 38 on December 18, but back down to 36 on December 24—Merry Christmas to whichever families got their loved ones back. I’ve been calling these resurrections. We went as low as 35 again on December 27, but have toggled mostly between 36, 37, and 38 most days since. Yesterday and today we are at 37. I don’t know the meaning of these “resurrections.” I’m assuming someone inputs data wrong, although I can’t explain why they would change it downward from an existing number. It may be that a death attributed to COVID-19 was later found to be due to some other cause. Whatever the reason, we essentially have not had a death due to COVID-19 in this zip code for over a month and a half. Back when we first got to 37 deaths, we had 70 active cases. Now, we topped out at just over 1200 active cases last weekend, and maybe this week we’re trending back down for good.

The comparison is, 70 active cases, one death per 20 days, to 1100 active cases, no deaths in 45 days.

I also look at my son’s county, in rural central Texas (getting data daily from the state) which has a population in the range of imaginable, like my zip code. They had a surge in deaths in a late summer wave. In November they had a total of 7 deaths. In December, just 1, going 35 days until 2 more in January. None the past two weeks. Their cases, meanwhile, have skyrocketed as we see all over.

In other words, unlike in past waves, deaths remain low, as if we are past a wave, even though our case rates are the highest ever. And, we should add, case rates are likely undercounted, since only official tests count, and for people who have only minor symptoms, they’re likely to stay home a few days until they feel better and not bother getting a test that would tell them to stay home a few days until they feel better. Or maybe they've done an at-home test that they do not report.

I’m on day 4 of something that feels like a bad cold; my husband had it for the five days before I came down with it. Neither of us had fever. I had a sore throat the first day. The rest has been just sinus congestion and severe fatigue. I haven’t been able to find at-home tests in stores (don't want to contact the government to send me any), and haven't wanted to go out and get a test when what I’m doing is getting me through this just fine. But, maybe it would be good to know if this is just a cold or Omicron.

The silver lining for all the people getting the Omicron variant this month is, getting the virus now gives future immunity. Even if there’s another wave to come, of an even more transmissible variant, this natural immunity holds up. And for those who miraculously stayed well through until the next strain, the severity of a future strain is going to be no worse than now, and possibly even weaker. And it will only progress through the population that doesn’t have it now, a population that's getting harder to find.

I've been watching these charts turn blue lately. The comparison is to the week before in that area. You can get actual numbers by clicking on the interactive maps on the site. If an area has been blue for a very long time, like South Africa, and now it's up a bit, that's a comparison to that place 7 days earlier, already low, so probably still low and not reason for alarm. There's another level that goes down to the county level, which is also fun to look at. Again, these are case counts, saying nothing about severity of illness, just whether it is spreading (orange) or not (blue).

New cases compared to 7 days prior, showing the trend
for the past three days for the US.
data gathered daily from here

New cases compared to 7 days prior, showing the trend
for the past three days for countries worldwide.
data gathered daily from here

Dr. John Campbell has been giving a lot of good news, from the data, this past week. On January 27, he pointed out that concerns about high case rates or even hospitalizations are temporary:

I don’t think it will mean that more people will die overall. But it means that the deaths could come in a shorter period of time, because the infection is going through the population in a shorter period of time.

A week earlier, January 20, Dr. Campbell presented interesting data on deaths from COVID-19 with no other underlying causes. That was eye opening. 

He refers to a release of data in the UK, following a FOIA request, which he assumes will translate to similar news in the US, Canada, and other similar countries.  The data was provided about a month ago but strangely was not mentioned in mainstream media, and he only just came across it. The data is cumulative, covering 2020 through the first three quarters of 2021, ending September 30, 2021. They’re looking at deaths listing COVID-19 and no other cause on the death certificate.

Total deaths from COVID-19 with no other underlying causes.: 17, 371

Age 0-64: 3,774

Age 65+: 13,597

During this time, the average age of these COVID deaths in 2021 for all of UK: 82.5 years.  This means a lot of people were over 82.5 in order to get that average. For comparison, the average life expectancy in the UK from 2018 to 2020 (which includes the first year of the pandemic):

Males: 79.0 years

Females: 82.9 years

Averaged out for whole country, there’s a drop in life expectancy of 7 weeks for men and an increase of 0.5 weeks for women—meaning all the COVID deaths have only reduced men’s life expectancy by a few weeks, and women’s life expectancy through the COVID-19 pandemic has actually increased by 3-4 days.

Dr. Campbell did this simple math, dividing the total number of deaths WITH COVID-19—137,133—by the number of deaths FROM COVID-19—17,371—and you get that there are 7.9 times more deaths WITH than FROM the virus.

For anyone well under 82.5 years old without comorbidities, the likelihood of death caused by COVID-19 was remarkably low—through September 2021. Since then, the Delta variant has been taken over by the Omicron variant, and likelihood of death has further dropped dramatically.

The data we’re getting can be summed up as:

·       Natural immunity is much stronger than vaccination.

·       The surge in cases with the Omicron variant (and sub-variants) will mean a huge portion of the population will have natural immunity going forward.

·       Vaccination may be helpful for certain groups, such as the elderly and those with comorbidities, for whom the virus is most dangerous; to all others, the vaccines and boosters provide little protection from contracting the virus or spreading the virus, and only marginal help in less virulent cases.

·       Following each additional booster, the amount of time before antibodies wain and a new booster is needed drops approximately in half. (This is mentioned in a Dr. Mobeen video.)

·       Lockdowns, masks, mandates, and other attempts at coercing the public have not contributed to protection from COVID-19 and have contributed to deaths and lower health by other causes than COVID-19.

There’s more news daily. Most of it indicates better days ahead, and what ought to be regret for the utter failure of national health advisories responsible for doing everything wrong these past two years, including squelching dissent and even possibilities for treatments, which have been known since the early months of 2020.

Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein discussed how to go forward, after knowing how people have behaved the past two years. Their advice seems to be, if someone recognizes their wrongness and apologizes—or at least admits their wrongness—then that is the right direction going forward, and we can associate with them. If they refuse even now to recognize they were wrong, or perhaps they claim against all evidence that they’d been on the side of truth all along, then we will know them for what they are and probably continue to distrust them. This has been significant for them. They were fired from their teaching positions and had their lives disrupted and their reputations sullied. For me, I’m just an onlooker, seeking the truth the whole time, but not materially affected.

This whole episode in world history has been both baffling and disturbing. May the effort to tyrannize people through fearmongering over this illness end abruptly and soon. And may everyone be wiser in the future.

 

More Resources:

Dr. John Campbell and Dr. Mobeen Syed put out videos just about every day going over the latest data and latest news. I suggest following them. Both are pretty good at explaining the data clearly, and also give links to the data sources for you to search out yourself. Dr. Peter McCullough goes on various podcasts and is always worth listening to. Besides those linked above, here are a few more sources worth checking out:

·       Dr. Peter McCullough on Meet Me for Coffee podcast, January 9, 2022.  Dr. McCullough gives a list of ways to treat yourself at home when you can’t get hold of the helpful medications (HCQ or Ivermectin).

·       “FDA Approval Never Happened for the Vaccines? Peter McCullough” on Anthony Pompliano podcast, January 12, 2022.

·       “Walmart in Quebec is BANNING Unvaccinated from Entering! Viva Vlawg on the Street” Viva Frei law vlog, January 25, 2022. 

·       “Who constructed the COVID narrative? (Chris Martenson & Bret Weinstein)” DarkHorse podcast clips, January 28, 2022. This is an interesting conversation about the topsy turvy situation we’re in.

·       The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., © 2021, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 

·       “Man removed from heart transplant list for being unvaccinated gets emergency pump” Yaron Steinbuch for the New York Post, January 27, 2022. 

Maybe This Will Be the Year

This past weekend was the annual March for Life in Washington, DC. There’s a different air this year. There’s hope, almost anticipation, that this might be the last year that the March goes on with Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.

March for Life 2022
Getty image found here

Marjorie Jackson, at the beginning of the prolifecon.org broadcast of the Family Research Council, done parallel to the March for Life, gave this introduction:

Today is the 17th Annual ProLifeCon Digital Action Summit here at Family Research Council. As well as the somber anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand through nine months of pregnancy. Thank you for joining us as we fight for the unborn. This year the March for Life feels a little different. This could possibly be our last year under Roe v. Wade legalized. Hope is in the air.

Kirk Cameron, actor and Christian, was at the March for Life and gave an interview to Fox News,which was passed along by The Daily Wire.  He said, “I think that we’re at a tipping point. I think that the tide is turning, science is making it more and more difficult for us to pretend like it’s not a baby in the womb. We know that it is.” Cameron's wife was adopted. Their first four children were adopted. They’ve been on the side of life a long time. As he put it, his wife—and each of those first four children—were “one doctor appointment away from not existing.” He adds, about his wife, “She was not a mistake; she was a miracle.” His whole family exists because mothers chose life.

He also thinks there’s a sea change happening in the culture. He says, “Even in Hollywood, there are more and more people who are embracing the idea that life is a gift from God.”

Some of the optimism this particular year stems from the oral arguments before the Supreme Court in early December. We went through some of the details then. But as Mary Zach, co-host on the ProLifeCon broadcast, summed it up: “It is about changing hearts and minds as well.” Maybe the law is ready to change now, because the people are ready to change. Not all people, but a growing majority.

Katherine Beck Johnson, Fellow for Legal and Policy Studies at FRC, was given time on that broadcast to offer an overview of what Dobbs v. Jackson was all about.

Katherine Beck Johnson, ProLifeCon broadcast
screenshot from here

KBJ: Dobbs is an incredibly consequential case. It is the biggest abortion case of our generation, the biggest abortion case since Casey in 1992.

Mississippi passed a 15-week abortion ban. This is by no means a radical pro-life law. But it was struck down as it is unconstitutional under Roe, which prevents any sort of pre-viability ban on abortion. And this was struck down at the district court and the 5^th Circuit as unconstitutional. Mississippi then petitioned the Supreme Court to take the case.

Now, the Supreme Court could have just issued a statement saying, "This is clearly unconstitutional under Roe. We agree with the 5^th Circuit.” But they took the case, signaling they might be willing to do something to alter abortion jurisprudence in America.

It was then taken up another notch when Mississippi filed their briefs, and they didn’t just simply ask the Court to uphold their 15-week ban. They went after Roe. They called Roe out for what it is, a disgrace to our nation and to our constitutional law. And they requested that the Court overturn Roe. So, therefore, the case now really before the Supreme Court is whether or not Roe should be overturned and abortion should return to the states. So, like I said, this is a hugely consequential case, and we look forward to the decision that comes down in, hopefully, June.

Later in the discussion, she covered more details of the justices’ questions, and why we have reason to be so hopeful:

KBJ: While it’s hard to always read the tea leaves of what the justices will do from oral arguments, we took a lot of encouragement from the questions being asked, especially from Justice Roberts, who has become quite the swing vote. He really talked about and probed, well, isn’t America an outlier in our abortion jurisprudence? Why are we just in the camp of North Korea and China in our protections of the unborn?

Justice Kavanaugh, who’s also become another swing vote, said himself, "Well, shouldn’t this just be left up to the states?" He said that in response to a growing movement within the pro-life movement that the unborn are actually protected under the 14th Amendment, and that the Constitution forbids abortion, and this should not be left up to the states…. So, we really particularly look to the swing voters on the Court and what they were saying.

And then Justice Alito, who basically closed it out, talking to the United States Solicitor General, Elizabeth [Prelogar], who is of course advocating that the Mississippi law be struck down, and as she was continuously talking about the rights of the woman, he said boldly, “Well, doesn’t the fetus have an interest in living?” And I thought that was just so profound, that here we had a justice willing to say, “What about the rights of the unborn child?”

Another guest on that broadcast was pro-life activist Alyson Centofonte, who had MC-ed the event in front of the Supreme Court during oral arguments. She described some differences in the crowds:

Alyson Centofonte, ProLifeCon
broadcast, screenshot from here

No one [on the pro-abortion side] actually had a very empowering message of supporting women and moms and families. There were no children there that I saw. There were no dads that I saw.

On our rally we had female legislators with their husbands and babies in tow. It’s very empowering to see.

So, I think the shift that is taking place is that the pro-life movement has been so successful at having a consistent message that women and families should be supported in law and society. And that’s really refreshing to a young woman who’s in an unplanned pregnancy and scared. Because, we need to hear, we all need to hear that, “You can do this; we will be with you; we’ll stand with you.” That’s what the pro-life movement says: “We will stand with you.” The other side says, “You’re on your own. Take care of this, and get back to work, or get back to whatever you’re doing.” We want to walk women through pregnancy and motherhood. And you saw that. You saw that at the Court, and you’re seeing it in the pro-life movement now.

If Roe gets reversed, it doesn’t abolish abortion; it returns the jurisprudence surrounding abortion to the states. During the intervening years, the rationale for recognizing the fetus as a living human being has only grown. So in many states that will mean real progress for life.

In South Dakota on Friday, in concert with people gathering in Washington, DC, for the March for Life, Governor Kristi Noem announced two pro-life bills. One would ban abortions after the detection of a heartbeat (similar to the Texas law). The other would prohibit telemedicine abortions in the state. She said, 

We hope that this year’s March for Life will be the last and that the Supreme Court will finally protect every unborn life. But until that comes to pass, these bills will ensure that both unborn children and their mothers are protected in South Dakota.

Governor Kristi Noem's tweet on January 21, 2022
image found here

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, in a letter attached to their fundraising, describes much of the progress: 

FRC’s influence with state legislators this past year has been unprecedented. During the week of the Dobbs case hearing in early December, FRC leaders and experts hosted more than 120 state legislators from 39 states at our largest-ever summit designed to advance pro-life protections to the states.

Such mobilization is essential right now. In the event Mississippi’s pro-life law is upheld, it likely means states will have greater flexibility to set policies to protect pre-born lives.

Our experts are equipping frontline conservative legislators with scientific facts regarding life in the womb—along with moral and ethical reasoning that can inform every policy battle.

In recent months, our team launched an interactive tracking website titled “America’s Direct Deposit to Planned Parenthood,” revealing the outrageous amount of US Taxpayer dollars the abortion industry giant receives every year.

From our detailed policy research to our “friend of the court briefs”—including one we filed in support of Mississippi in the Dobbs case—these resources are informing policymakers at all levels.

He adds a request for prayer,

As this new year begins, I hope and trust you will commit to pray for our leaders—particularly those making life-or-death decisions on the Supreme Court….

God calls us to be intercessors in this hour. Intercession means to intervene on behalf of another, or to put it another way, to stand in the gap.

Will you commit to stand in the gap for our nation?

Let us never neglect to start and end the day on our knees, crying out to God for truth to prevail, for innocent lives to be saved, and for the Kingdom of God to advance.

Being an intercessor starts with prayer…but, in my experience, it doesn’t end there. That’s why our effective strategies including mobilizing Americans like you and informing policymakers—to shape the future of America and save lives in the womb.

That’s their organization’s goal. And it’s a good one. The call for the rest of us, besides prayer, is to inform, teach, help, support, and make it easier for individual women in distress to choose life in a world that has been trying to convince them not to.

I listened to a podcast the other night [Y Religion, episode 48, “The Complementary Nature of Mothers and Fathers” with Dr. Jenet Erickson], about research surrounding motherhood. Worth a listen. One detail was that, biologically, the growing baby and mother interact in ways we never knew. They share health support for one another. They exchange cells. They are forever part of one another. Once the baby is born he seeks his mother; he knows her voice and recognizes her. She is his preferred human for probably the first eighteen months, when he’s ready to turn outward toward father and others. It’s a profound honor to be so significant to another human being. If a woman truly knows that child within her, knows he is alive and interacting with her already, would she ever choose anything but life? The more we learn, the more life makes sense.

This year just might be the year we can more freely help all women choose life.

Oppression Is Evil

from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech

 

I share Martin Luther King’s dream.

Earlier today I read a tribute, from someone who had visited MLK’s historic home in Montgomery, Alabama. She quoted something from that tour, offered in a recording of his voice: 

“It was around midnight. You can have some strange experiences at midnight,” he says through the recording. It was January 1956 at the time, and Dr. King had just received yet another threat. The voice on the other end had called him an offensive name, followed by, “[We] are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.”

Dr. King's voice shares how that message shook him to the very core.

“I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born…. She was the darling of my life. I’d come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute…. And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee, I never will forget it…. I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night.

“I said, ‘Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But, Lord, I must confess that I’m awake now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. And I can’t let the people see me like this, because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak.’ Then it happened: And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.’… I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.”

I’m afraid right now he must be rolling over in his grave. Among civil society, his dream has come true. It’s not acceptable for anyone to hate because of race. Except—that voice he heard, so full of hate that they were willing to kill him, that voice is still speaking. And it’s coming from the people he was trying to help. His people. Their descendants and others seeking to oppress.

I wrote about this last week; at our school board meeting, newly elected school board member Scott Henry had the courage to say that the equity audit report’s suggestion that we hire more black teachers—not because of qualification, but because of race, wouldn’t work.

It wasn’t enough that he was lied about and mischaracterized. It wasn’t enough that they called for his removal from the school board. It wasn’t enough that they got the media to lie about what he’d said. It wasn’t even enough that they made threats to his life and the lives of his family members—just like the oppressors did to MLK. (This is especially ironic following the National School Board Association letter to the Biden administration in September led to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s admission that they were investigating conservative parents as a threat to school board members—not because of any actual evidence of threats from those parents, but because of that letter; are these actually threatening pro-racist Democrats going to be investigated?) None of that would satisfy; they had to seek out his employers and shame them into firing him; what is oppression, after all, if not the ability to take away a person’s means to make a living?

How did the employer, San Francisco-based software company Splunk, explain the sudden firing?

 "We viewed the employee's conduct as inconsistent with who we are as Splunkers and the individual is no longer employed by our company," they tweeted. What he said was that our school district should not use racist hiring practices. That is what Splunk finds inconsistent with who they are? 

Scott Henry called for us not to be racist. He commented,

Because I dared to disagree that it equates to high retention rates, there have been threats upon my life, and my wife and my children have been targeted. I will take responsibility for not saying it more eloquently.

For that he is being called a racist. One tweet put it this way:

This racist Texas #CyFair school board member just said that more Black teachers leads to worse student outcomes. He must resign. And be called out. And maybe sued….— Demanding Liz (@ehanks2208) January 12, 2022 

Did he say that? No. Did he say anything negative about black teachers in either CFISD or HISD? No.

Henry wanted CFISD to hire based on “the content of their character,” and their qualifications to teach, rather than simply the color of their skin, something MLK would approve. But the world has been toppled over.

Harris County Judge (administrator) Lina Hidalgo told the media: 

What we saw the other night was the racism said out loud. And if we allow this kind of thing in a public forum by a public official that represents a school district, what are we allowing?

Did Lina Hidalgo hear his full comments? If she did, what part of “let’s not hire based on race” offends her?

When asked to explain, Henry wrote a statement:

I was defending our school district against attacks from an out-of-state political organization that claimed our schools were failing our students because we did not [have] one pre-determined diversity metric. This political organization claimed that one metric—the percent of black teachers in our schools—determined the quality of education our students receive.

So, if they needed clarification (which they shouldn’t have needed, if they’d heard his full statement), that should have settled it. Someone at the school board meeting called that “walking back his statement,” and said we shouldn’t accept it.

The lies don’t stop.

I don’t know who it was at the Monday night meeting that gleefully spread the word that there was something said they could distort—but whoever did that is evil. I don’t know who the instigator is, but I’m going to call out a couple of the speakers, because of their power and influence, which carry their lies further than others.

Odus Ebbagharu speaking at
CFISD school board meeting January 13.
screenshot from here

One is Odus Ebbagharu, Harris County Democrat Party Chair. He was welcomed with calls of “Odus! Odus! Odus!” from the Odus-friendly crowd. Claiming unanimity with the community, “Republican, Democrat, doesn’t matter,” he says, “To sit down here and listen to what I just heard, this is not the community I know.” Then he called out the school board members and followed with a Desmond Tutu quote:

School board members, when these comments were made, not one of you spoke out. Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

The reason no school board members called out Scott Henry at the meeting was because he hadn’t said anything to call out. He brought forth an opinion, based on the data in the report, and made a recommendation, which they would be discussing at some future point. How horrifying! More on the side of the oppressor in a minute.

The other person I’m calling out is Dr. and Pastor Evelyn Ogletree. She says something I fully agree with:

I know teachers of all races. And you cannot determine whether they’re good or bad by their race.

Dr. Evelyn Ogletree speaking at
the CFISD board meeting January 13,
screenshot from here

Scott Henry agrees with that sentence. That was the point he was making. We shouldn’t hire based on race; we should hire good teachers, because their race doesn’t matter. Everyone in support of Scott Henry believes that. Many of the “useful idiots” who were stirred up to hate Scott Henry believe that. We’re in agreement.

Except—those who are spreading the lie that that’s not what Scott Henry believes really do want hiring based on race. They want racist hiring practices. And they want racist treatment of students. But they don’t call it racist if it’s blacks committing the racism.

Dr. Ogletree used the term “African-American” nine times in her sanctimonious 2½-minute speech. She says, “I am appalled at what was said. I am hurt. I am just, really just cannot believe that this is happening in our district.”

You know what does not appall her? The racist tweets her husband sent out on the regular—her husband, Dr. and Pastor John Ogletree, one of the three board members we ousted in the election, and the one who wrote the Resolution that called for the equity audit recommending that our district use racist hiring practices. (We were reminded of these in my friend Bill Ely's excellent public comments Thursday.) To refresh your memory, here are a few:

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

·       “White Evangelicalism is nothing but slaveholder religion.”

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

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

·       “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.”

Who’s divisive? Who’s racist? Who’s a religious bigot? Her co-pastor and husband.

But she calls on parents, teachers, and the community to speak out against a school board member for saying what she said: that you cannot determine whether a teacher is good or bad by their race.

So what was that Resolution her husband wrote about? It wasn’t about making sure we treat our students and teachers of all races equally; it was about segregating out blacks and privileging them—and oppressing anyone who stands in the way of that goal.

If you have the power to make a phonecall and intimidate a corporation into firing an employee who disagrees with your political aims, you’re not the oppressed; you’re the oppressor.

If you have the power to make a phonecall and have the government and the press appear at your beck and call and spread whatever message/lie you put out there, you’re not the oppressed; you’re the oppressor.

If you use your race as a threatening weapon against people don't look like you or don't think like you, you’re not the oppressed; you’re the oppressor.

This is evil. The people who perpetuate it are evil. Particularly evil are the ones who lie about anyone standing in their way, insisting they're the evil ones. Sowing discord. Persuading people that they’ve got to stand up against evil racism—by denigrating people who aren’t racist while wielding the threat of labeling them racist to ruin their lives.

One more quote, from the scriptures:

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven.

—Matthew 5:10-12.

Scott Henry is being persecuted for speaking the truth and doing his duty, which includes preventing this pernicious racism from taking over our schools. I pray for him that he does not need to wait until heaven for the blessings.

I’d love to see someone out there with connections to a company that could use a good data analyst—to quietly step in and restore this good man’s ability to make a living for his family. Make his life better than it would have been if he’s stayed with a company so quickly willing to give in to the oppressors.

I expect there’s more persecution coming. Brace for it. Because there’s plenty of evil right here in our community.

Hearing They Hear Not, Neither Do They Understand

Seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.—Matthew 13:13

Remember how we worked all last summer and fall to elect three new school board members?  And the main reason, as with many school districts across the country, was the pushing of racist Critical Race Theory ideas in our schools? Well, now’s the time for the payoff/fallout. On Monday was the first down-to-business school board work meeting (formal board meeting happened Thursday night; more on that later). In Monday’s meeting, board members talked about the equity audit that the previous board signed a resolution to do and then spent money on. Results are back, and a presentation was given at that work meeting.

I have not been able to see the results, beyond the presentation, which was scant on details. I did find the presentation, which I believe was given last April to the previous board prior to their ordering the audit. [I found it here, but could not pass along the link itself, because it has been moved, but clicking on the link downloaded the file for me to look at.) And I found this article, which is informative but pretty much devoid of data. During the meeting the public didn’t get to see the details. And even board members didn’t seem to have access to the raw data and methodology, which was glossed over in the presentation. That was a real problem for several board members, particularly the data-driven ones: new members Scott Henry and Luke Scanlon and board president Tom Jackson. (I’m noting Jackson in particular, because he had no problem expressing these flaws in the study Monday night, but seemed indifferent to them on Thursday night.)

But here’s one of the problems of our times: you can say something benign and well-reasoned, and someone will take offense and claim you said something that you didn’t.

That problem has hit Scott Henry this week, following his comments on Monday. He even made the front page of the Houston Chronicle. Harris County Judge (administrator) Lina Hidalgo passed along her uninformed assessment that he said black teachers cause low graduation rates in Houston’s humongous, scandal-ridden, downtown school district, Houston ISD (independent school district).

from Houston Chronicle, January 13, 2022, pp. A-1 and A-6

Did he say that? No. Did he say something that a reasonable person would construe to mean that? No. But there were a lot of unreasonable people at Thursday’s formal board meeting. Hidalgo held court (er, a press conference) out front, surrounded by news media and a crowd of sign holders letting us know that black teachers were good people—something no one had disputed. Hidalgo never came inside for the meeting, where she would have been given a forum to speak; it was all about the media for her.

But the room was packed inside. I got there a mere ten minutes early and signed up to speak, just in case. The system has always been that, during public comments, up to 10 people, chosen randomly from those who sign up, get to speak for 2 minutes each on topics related to the agenda. And then 10 people (also chosen randomly from those signed up) can speak during community comment time with the same limitations. Usually that’s where we get to speak. But since the equity audit was on the agenda, that’s what I signed up to speak on. And they changed the rules as of this meeting. As many as signed up were allowed to speak. I was next to last in that public comment segment. I didn’t count; I’m guessing around 30 spoke. The meeting started at 6:00. Public comment began shortly afterward. I spoke about 8:30, I think. You can look it up, but I feel awkward about how I looked and sounded on camera, so I’m not linking to the spot. Two minutes isn’t long enough to accomplish much of a point, but I was there as moral support.

Anyway, what turned out to be a minority of us came to support Scott Henry from the pitchfork wielders who were calling for him to resign over his “racist” comments.

CFISD Board Member Scott Henry, at work meeting January 10, 2022
screenshot from here

Here’s the troublesome segment, about 10 minutes into his 12 minutes of comment:

Scott Henry: You mentioned talking about people that look like us, and things, which I would like to remind people: our teachers are our most important asset within our district. I love our teachers. I love what they do for us every day. My kiddo loves her teachers. But I looked online. You were talking earlier about people that look like us. And we have such a hard time getting teachers. I know it’s such a hard job. You have a hard job getting teachers. Very hard. People just don’t want to be teachers anymore. I get that. It’s hard. But Cy-Fair has, what, 13% black teachers. I know you mentioned that earlier. Do you know what the statewide average is for black teachers?

Audit Results Presenter: Not at this moment, sir.

Scott Henry: 10%. I looked it up. The statewide average for black teachers is 10%. Houston ISD, which y’all used as the shining example—you know what their average number, percentage of black teachers is? 36%. I looked that up. You know what their dropout rate is? 4% I don’t want to be 4%. I don’t want to be HISD. I want to be a shining example. I want to be the district standard. I want to be the place, the premium place where people go to be. And, quite frankly, we have a limited budget with limited resources. We have a great place. And let’s don’t mess it up for everyone else.

I highlighted the part the media quoted. He was following up on an earlier part of his comments, referring to one recommendation of the equity audit asserting that Cy-Fair ISD needed to increase the percentage of black teachers, because students need to see someone who looks like them as their teacher in order to improve discipline problem and graduation rates. And the audit referred to Houston ISD as a glowing example in this regard. 

You can see there is nothing in his comments saying anything bad about black teachers. He’s pointing out that we’re already above the state average, and that’s a good thing. But their recommendation—especially when they hold up Houston ISD as their “glowing example”—doesn’t indicate that following this recommendation would lead to better outcomes.

So what he’s saying is, we shouldn’t use race as the basis for our hiring; it won’t get us the results we want, namely fewer discipline problems (talked about earlier) and lower dropout rates. His 4% number was a misspeak, by the way; HISD’s rate is considerably higher than that, and is higher than Cy-Fair’s, despite their higher percentage of black teachers, which was the point. By the way, he was also called out for denigrating another school district. But that's not what he was doing; HISD needs no help doing that. What Scott Henry is doing is pointing out the flaws in the audit report, which multiple times held up HISD as the model to follow.

Incidentally, no one at the Monday meeting gasped or exclaimed audibly when he said this. No one was appalled. But someone apparently found it useful enough to twist, to stir up the thousands who weren't there Monday and probably still haven't heard his whole comments.

The offended hordes at the meeting heard: “I hate black teachers. We should fire them. Black teachers cause higher dropout rates.” You can listen to the public comments for yourself. I’m not exaggerating. They were calling for his lynching—OK, bad choice of metaphors; literally they called for him to resign or be fired for that horrible thing he said, which showed how racist he is. That horrible message was, as you can see, “Let’s not be racist.”

It’s strange how we can be in the same room, hearing the same words, and hear completely different things—opposite things. Someone said, derisively, “And then you’ll celebrate Martin Luther King on Monday….” Oddly, MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech offers the hope that we can judge people on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin—just as Scott Henry had suggested for our hiring of teachers. The actual racists refer to the idea of a colorblind society as being white supremacist and are in the process of canceling MLK. That’s how skewed they are.

Here’s the problem with an equity audit: equity, in CRT-speak, means equal outcomes. What they are looking for are things that look unbalanced for one race in particular, and then they attribute the cause as being systemic racism. And then they make recommendations that will install contracts with their prescribed vendors to stir up more such “evidence.” It’s a racket. We taxpayers get stuck with the bill for putting CRT in our schools—even after the legislature outlawed that this past session.

In Monday’s meeting, board member Julie Hinaman tried to clear up misconceptions about the meaning of the word equity, in defense of their calling for the audit last year. She gave this definition:

Educational equity is about ensuring all students are successful. It’s about removing barriers to student success. It’s about working to close the achievement gaps. So, it’s about two things: resources—do all students have the resources that they need to be successful? And are we removing barriers that are preventing them from being successful?

series of slides in the presentation given to the Board prior to doing the equity audit,
given by Dr. Roger Cleveland of Millennium Learning Concepts,
from presentation found here

I’m not against ensuring that all students have the resources they need to succeed. That should be an obvious funding priority. But I think we need to be more precise about removing the barriers preventing their success. One of the biggest barriers is a dysfunctional family situation, and schools are not the solution to that problem; they are pretty much no more than pressure on a gaping wound in those cases. New board member Luke Scanlon had pointed out that some students literally have survival as a goal. Just live through another day.

Sometimes that disadvantage looks like a socioeconomic problem—families that don’t make enough money lead to students with worse outcomes. But when you look deeper, you see that the problem isn’t just money; that’s a symptom. The problem is broken homes, no father in the home, unstable situations at home.

Sometimes that problem looks like a racial problem. But when you look at the data, you find that black children are more likely to be born out of wedlock and more likely to live with a single parent. That is not caused by white racism against blacks in our schools; it isn’t solvable by eliminating every particle of racism.

If schools have a role, it could be teaching the importance of following the formula for rising above poverty in America: stay in school through high school, get a job, wait until marriage for sex, wait until marriage to have children. That formula works for every race in our society. If we’re failing to pass along that basic fact, we’re doing a disservice.

But, while it’s arguable that Great Society policies have led to more fatherless homes in the black demographic, the barrier isn’t caused by “systemic racism” among the population in Cy-Fair ISD.

When we have a problem with black students being 19% of the school population but 40% of the discipline problems, measured as suspensions, that doesn’t mean we should discipline the individual troublemakers less because of their race; it might mean that we need to discipline them more. Or find better discipline approaches. Saying, “Oh, they’re black and therefore disadvantaged, so let’s let them get away with whatever they want,” is telling them the rules don’t apply to them. That’s not a good thing to teach them. Luke Scanlon suggested that, from his experience, holding them accountable, in meaningful ways, gets them to be higher achievers. I’d say giving in to their tyranny-because-of-color not only harms the remaining students, it harms them even more.

So, we can recognize some students lack what other students have at home. But we shouldn’t be handicapping those fortunate students just so we can close up an achievement gap. The problem is not that there is a gap that should be closed; the problem is that there are children who are achieving less than they could, and we need to look at ways to bring them up.

Imagine a solution where we end up doing something that helps the lower achievers that also happens to help high achievers, the gap won’t close. But the real objective would be met—getting each child closer to potential. Focusing on closing the gap is like climbing a ladder that’s up against the wrong wall.

I don’t know what the board is going to do about the equity audit and its recommendations. Hopefully our new board members will stand strong against this actual racist infiltration, which is what we elected them to do. And maybe they’ll be able to sway some of the others. An angry horde calling you racist—and staking out your home and sending death threats to you and your family (yes, those things happened this week to Scott Henry)—is a scary thing to stand up to. This is what we elected them to do.

We’re praying they can do it. Literally, many friends together prayed at a certain hour today (and also continually) to lift up Scott Henry. May God protect him—and any others in this battle of ideas that is affecting our next generation in the schools.

So Many Things They Know That Aren’t So

image found here

That Reagan quote is our theme today. We're applying it to Friday's oral arguments at the Supreme Court and Thursday's anniversary of the January 6, 2021, difference of opinions.

 

SCOTUS on Mandates

This past Friday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the vaccine mandate cases, both for OSHA and for healthcare workers at facilities receiving federal funding. The first took two hours; the second, more tailored case, was an hour and a half. You’re welcome to listen to all of it. But I’ll go over some of the highlights, and the commentary on those highlights.

Notable is the way the nine justices appear. Three do not wear masks; six do. Note that all are triple-vaxxed (two vaccine doses plus booster). Everyone had to have a clear COVID test to enter. Therefore, theoretically, there was no reason to wear a mask in a sparsely populated, well-ventilated room—unless you assume the vaccines and tests do not work and a person with no symptoms can spread the disease.

The three who don’t wear masks—Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch—ask questions about constitutional authority. Where does the government have power to do what it’s doing?

The three Democrat appointees all wear masks—and Sotomayor was additionally tuned in remotely. I couldn’t see this; I’m using a description from Robert Barnes from the Viva & Barnes Sunday night livestream. So I’m further confounded that someone might think she could get the disease over the internet. Is this an old person misunderstanding about computer viruses?

Crankshaft comic of January 8, 2022, found in the Houston Chronicle

Anyway, these three do not seem interested in the law, or the Constitution, or authority. They simply put forward the notion that the government can do whatever it deems necessary, because—crisis! Extraordinary times; extraordinary measures.

The remaining three middling justices, with masks, asked questions that made it seem, according to Barnes, they were all focused on, “Isn’t this a little too much?”

So mask wearing—or at least lack of it—might be an indicator of constitutional understanding, just as it seems to be out in the general population.

The description of mask wearing, by the way, was different, according to Amy Howe on SCOTUS Blog, where she says all of the eight present wore masks except Gorsuch. And she noted that two of the lawyers also participated remotely. So I don’t know whether the mask is the true indicator. But the division of three segments of justices seems apt.

Politifact tweet, January 7, 2022
image found here

Sotomayor was the most embarrassing to the Court. Even Politifact rated her exaggerations as “very false.” She tried claiming:

We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators!!!!!

Exclamations points are my addition. The fact is, there have only been 83,000 children hospitalized with COVID since the pandemic began. And Fauci last week noted that we still do not differentiate between hospitalized for COVID and hospitalized with COVID. Everyone admitted to a hospital for any reason these days is given a COVID test. If they test positive (and false positives are still common), then they are listed as a COVID case, even when asymptomatic. So a child with a broken leg could be considered a COVID case. Many children, particularly during the Delta and Omicron phases, have had COVID, but most are mild and may not even be tested. So, yes, there are cases. But an illness that is milder for children that the flu ought not to cause a justice of the Supreme Court to clutch her pearls in a panic.

According to federal data, under 5,000 children with a positive COVID test were in hospitals in this country. Again, that’s “with,” not necessarily hospitalized “because of” COVID. The CDC said Friday that 4 in 100,000 children admitted to hospitals are infected with COVID—maybe that’s the factoid she twisted. The CDC’s Dr. Rochelle Walensky added, “We have not yet seen a signal that there is any increased severity in this age demographic.” She also noted that similar worries about the Delta variant had proved to be unfounded.

There was more need of fact-checking. Sotomayor also claimed, “Omicron is as deadly as Delta." Not so. South Africa got through their entire wave with possibly zero deaths from the variant, as of mid-December. Cases skyrocketed and then dropped.

Southern Africa has been improving for weeks, meaning
its peak has passed. Data from here, January 9, 2022.

Other countries are now going through the precipitous rise in cases. In our area, so many people have been coming down with it that we closed church on Sunday. I’ve known many who have had it lately—many more lately than I’ve known during the rest of the whole pandemic. But I know no one needing hospitalization. During earlier variants I did know of several hospitalized cases. So I think we’re in the Omicron wave now. But death from COVID tends to appear late—after weeks of treatment. So current deaths could still be from the Delta variant. That data is extrapolated from spot testing; not everyone knows what variant they have. But the milder symptoms and quick spread right now mean it’s probably Omicron.

Omicron is at least as easy to deal with through early treatment as earlier variants. And that information doesn’t even appear in the SCOTUS hearings.

There’s another detail I’m wondering about: if the wave lasted about four weeks in South Africa, and is already well underway here, then getting vaccinated now would still leave you vulnerable during the coming few weeks. Getting a shot might even make you more vulnerable. So why the continued push for vaccination?

Anecdote for our times: I’m familiar with someone trying to bring his fiancée over from Ukraine. She had COVID a month or so ago. In Ukraine they seem to be aware that, while your natural antibodies are very high from just having had the disease, you shouldn’t get a vaccine; that’s not helpful and possibly dangerous. So she has to keep going back for tests until her antibodies go down (and, by the way, they go down in the current active state but remain in memory cells, so she’ll still have immunity), because the US won’t allow her in without being fully vaccinated.

Here’s what the Democrat-appointed justices seem to believe:

·         COVID-19 is as dangerous and likely to cause death as smallpox or Ebola.

·         It is just as dangerous to children as adults and elderly.

·         Nothing works against this dangerous pathogen except vaccines—and three shots are much better than two—or more if deemed necessary later.

·         The vaccines guarantee immunity and spreading. Except from the unvaccinated; you can still get it from them.

·         The unvaccinated spew the pathogen wherever they roam, killing off people in their wake, whether they have the disease or not.

·         If the justices are personally fearful of a pathogen, then certainly that is reason enough to favor granting any and all power to the federal government to take whatever measures the elite bureaucrats deem necessary.   

Of course COVID-19 has never been dangerous to most of the population. Most deaths have occurred in people over 80 with co-morbidities. Some deaths have occurred in younger people with serious co-morbidities, so it has been concerning. But this is the first time we’ve tried quarantining the healthy who are not at risk.

About 98% of the vulnerable population are vaccinated at this point. But there have been treatments available—and most effective are early treatments—at least since April 2020. The vaccines should never have gotten emergency use authorization status, because other effective treatments were available. The treatments were censored and derided—so that vaccines could be pushed. Whoever did this was content to have hundreds of thousands of people die unnecessarily so they could push a vaccine.

And the vaccine they pushed wasn’t a traditional vaccine that gives immunity; it was merely something that might somewhat increase a person’s antibodies for a time. It doesn’t prevent getting the virus, so they started saying the vax is necessary to have a milder case. But a vaccinated person can still get the virus and spread it. A person with natural immunity cannot get it or spread it (except, all bets are off with Omicron, which might be a step toward being a new virus, such as we have with other common cold coronaviruses). And yet people with natural immunity are as likely to be shunned for not also getting vaccinated as are those who have managed to stay well two years into this without contracting it (because their Vitamin D levels are high enough?) and do not want to be forced to take an emergency use vaccine.

Regardless of what those three justices think, vaccines have never been mandated without exemptions for religious or health reasons. Vaccines that are experimental have never been mandated—and should not be; it is a violation of the Nuremberg Code. And these vaccines neither prevent getting ill nor spreading the disease.

If it’s this easy for me to get all this information, why are these justices so ignorant?

Viva Frei is Canadian, so not fully aware of which judges were appointed by which party, etc. He put it this way:

But the questions and the hyperbole coming from the judges was what you would expect to hear from a bad lawyer, not from the highest decision-makers in the world, in the country. And it’s hyperbolic. And it’s grotesquely ignorant. And it’s the highest, allegedly, supposed to be the most informed, most educated people in the land, who are going to be making these decisions for the rest of the country.

Later in the livestream, Viva and Barnes were looking at a bit of Supreme Court history, treading carefully not to make the wild Nazi comparison, and then came back to the vaccine mandate discussion. Robert Barnes added this scathing assessment:

Frankly, this started in Britain and the US. The ideas for eugenics and social Darwinism were British and American ideas. The Nazis always cited British and American authorities. Particularly, like, I’m waiting for somebody in one of these vaccine mandate cases that gets to SCOTUS to just go after them on this issue. To say, “The last time you got high and mighty on when you thought public health authorities should be completely deferred to was when you said three generations of imbeciles was enough in order to force sterilizations that became the law of the land for 50 years, that led to forced sterilizations of poor women all across the country. So maybe you should be a little bit more careful, before you get up on your high horse about what you think medicine is, before you take off that black robe and put on that white lab coat and pretend that your professional class compadres are the ones who should dictate and direct public health policy in America. Because you have a long history of being atrocious at it. Abominable at it.” The ideas for eugenics came from America. The Nazis copied American laws and American policies and American principles—and their number one source of authority was the Supreme Court of the United States.

Here are some other sources related to the oral arguments:

·       “Left-leaning fact-checker nails Justice Sotomayor over wildly false claim about children, COVID-19” Chris Enloe for The Blaze, January 9, 2022. 

·       “’Many on Ventilators’—Justice Sotomayor Falsely Claims Over 100,000 Children in Serious Condition Because of Covid” Jeff Rizzone for The DC Weekly, January 7, 2022. 

·       “Live Q&A: Judge Refuses FDA Request, Gives 8 Months for Pfizer Data; Trump Social Network Nears” Joshua Philipp on Crossroad Highlights, January 9, 2022. 

·       “30 States Oppose Biden Vaccine Mandate, Via SCOTUS Brief of Family Councils” by Joseph Menslage for Katy Christian Magazine, January 4, 2022. 

·     

 

January 6^th Anniversary

That was enough for a full post. But the other example of ridiculous beliefs from last week was the January 6^th anniversary, which deserves a mention. Alas, my resolution to write shorter posts fails already. Anyway, first enjoy this celebration from The Babylon Bee:

·         “10 Fun Ways to Celebrate January 6 This Year” The Babylon Bee, January 5 2022. 

The most unlikable politician in history, VP Kamala Harris, gave the speech of lies: 

Certain dates echo throughout history, including dates that instantly remind all who have lived through them—where they were and what they were doing when our democracy came under assault. Dates that occupy not only a place on our calendars, but a place in our collective memory. December 7th, 1941. September 11th, 2001. And January 6th, 2021.

Let’s do a chart:

Event	Deaths	Those Who Caused Deaths
Pearl Harbor bombing	2,335 military personnel killed 1,143 wounded	Japanese declaring war against us
9/11/2001 attacks at World Trade Center and Pentagon	2,977 people were killed 6,000+ injured	Islamist terrorists continuing a war they declared against us
1/6/2021	1 protestor killed, 4 rally participants died of natural causes*	Capitol Police

 

Here’s what they seem to believe, or want us to believe:

·       All Trump supporters are insurrectionists, trying to overthrow the country.

·       Anyone who attended the Trump rally on January 6th participated in insurrection.

·       The reason people were at the capitol was to stop the official proceedings being carried out by Congress

·       They wanted to overturn a free and fair election of the people by staging a coup.

·       Trump instigated the insurrection and signaled people to attack the capitol.

·       Lawmakers barely escaped with their lives.

Except, of course, that’s not true. Any of it.

The hundreds of thousands of rally goers went to express their support for Trump and to express their dismay at the rampant voter fraud; it was called the Stop the Steal Rally. They were encouraging lawmakers to accept alternate slates of electors from several states. This is a constitutionally provided procedure—which Democrats often avail themselves of for no rational reason beyond partisanship.

Only a small percentage of people entered the capitol. Most of those who entered did so at the invitation of Capitol Police, where they were allowed to walk around and take photos.

A much smaller percentage caused violence. None of those causing violence was armed. No one at the Capitol that day was armed except the police. No lawmakers’ lives were threatened; they were all evacuated at the first sign of a breach of the building.

There was indeed some violence. Instigators have not been charged, oddly. As more evidence comes out, it appears this was an FBI-instigated entrapment operation. They were hoping to goad Trump supporters into violence, so they could blame Trump and his supporters. The people who were charged are being held on trespass charges and a few for vandalism. There are no insurrection charges, because there is no evidence of insurrection happening that day. None.

Recently information has come out about two of the “natural causes” deaths. One is a woman said to have overdosed on a prescription medication. There is surveillance footage of her being beaten by Capitol Police and dragged back into the building. This calls the coroner’s report into question as part of a political coverup. Story here:

·       “Videos Shed Light on Death of Rosanne Boyland at US Capitol on Jan. 6” by Joseph M. Hanneman for The Epoch Times, January 7 (updated January 8), 2022. 

·       “Live Q&A: Judge Refuses FDA Request, Gives 8 Months for Pfizer Data; Trump Social Network Nears” Joshua Philipp for Crossroads Highlights, January 9, 2022.  This is the same video as above; here it is linked to come up at the place of this story.

Another “natural causes” death that may also have been caused or contributed to by Capitol Police is believed to be Kevin Greeson, 55, of Alabama. He had a history of high blood pressure and reportedly died of a heart attack. But there is an eyewitness account and video showing that there was a sudden attack on a peaceful crowd by Capitol Police, with less-than-lethal tear gas, concussion grenades, rubber bullets and pepperballs. The eyewitness report is from comedian Tyler Baggins of Wisconsin, who was recording the crowd that day. His video shows the crowd singing the Lee Greenwood song “I’m Proud to Be an American” and then cuts to footage of CPR being done on Greeson.

Lauren Witzke was a reporter on scene that day for National File, reporting this:

By the time I got to the Capitol, people had already made their way up to the steps. Trump supporters were waving flags and trying to talk to the Capitol Police. Every rally-goer at that point was extremely peaceful. I then saw Capitol Police Officers with rifles appear on the balcony looking down on us. Almost immediately, the Capitol Police on the ground started throwing flash grenades into the crowds, teargassing us all.

I moved about 40 feet away from the steps, and just stood there, yet the tear gas and flash grenades continued. After being flash bombed and tear-gassed for the third time, I looked down beside me to see that a middle-aged man—Kevin Greeson—on the ground, blue in the face.

My friend Kimberley immediately began CPR and continued until her lips were bleeding. But she couldn’t get him breathing again. Men were yelling “Help we need an EMT, get this man an ambulance,” etc. We begged the Capitol police officers for help. But they ignored us, and continued macing old men who got anywhere near them.

Trump supporters were able to make a makeshift gurney out of the fencing and carry him out of there. Capitol Police continued to flash bomb and tear gas us, macing in the face anyone who came near them.

She reported that there had been absolutely no violence in the crowd prior to the assault from Capitol Police. Emergency personnel did not rush to help, as previously reported. People in the crowd carried the man to get medical help, which took about half an hour, at which time he was pronounced dead. There is some speculation that any eventual violence that happened was in response to his death and the unwarranted and unwarned assault by Capitol Police.

This information comes from a source I am not familiar with, so use your discernment. However, in other places it coincides with news I’ve heard elsewhere, such as the Ricochet report, which I wrote about and linked to here. Here's the story:

·       “VIDEOS: Jan 6 Violence Sparked by Innocent Man's Death, Police Grenade Assault on Peaceful Crowd” by A. J. Cooke for National File, January 6, 2022. 

Robert Barnes also tied these two issues together, which kind of summarizes today’s post:

Well, it’s kind of parallel to the vaccine mandate hearings at the Supreme Court. You have the reality of the way things are actually shaping up, if you look at the facts on the ground, versus the narrative, the myth, that’s being propagated by the press. And just as Sotomayor had this myth of everybody’s dying, and the kids are dying, and all the rest, the mythical narrative of January 6th is still the insurrection that almost happened, that has to be remedied. We should look at it like the second coming of the Civil War and 9/11.

And the reality is, it’s none of those things. Nobody’s been charged with insurrection. There’s more people filing frivolous lawsuits against everybody. More evidence that, in fact, capitol police—some of the other people that died that day may not have been from natural causes; it may have been the capitol police killed them. And they covered it up. And thanks to the good work of Tom Fitton at Judicial Watch, they’ve used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover more evidence. Because there’s 14,000 hours of video evidence the government’s trying to hide from the world, including from the defendants themselves.

And it appears the reason for that is not only a lot of informants being part of the process, but the Capitol Police behaved in a very illicit manner, and was just violently bringing people in and beating the daylights out of them for kicks and giggles. Including women, older women, like that.

Now we’re starting to find out why they hid and covered a lot of this up. That the only really violent people that day were actually the capitol police, not the people who are accused of being the insurrectionists.

This is not the America we know and love. God help us. Here’s a New Year’s wish: May all their crimes be shouted from the rooftops; may all the corruption be rooted out of our government; may we return to the thriving civilization that happens when a free and good people are allowed to live their lives without tyranny.