In the end, McCarthy’s feet will be held to the fire by the base… me.
Steve Inman
Matt Gaetz vs Kevin McCarthy & Mike Rogers #SpeakerVote pic.twitter.com/gQchS2QRu1
— Steve Inman (@SteveInmanUIC) January 7, 2023
Author: Papa Giorgio
Chip Roy Explains What the Speaker Fight Is About
The Republican Party found itself in chaos on Tuesday when Rep. Kevin McCarthy failed to receive enough votes to secure the House Speaker position. McCarthy told reporters the party is still ‘unified,’ but after tense meetings on Tuesday, Rep. Chip Roy tells Glenn some conservative members of Congress are hardening their anti-McCarthy stance. So what’s going on, and why is it VITAL the correct Republican gets the job? Rep. Chip Roy describes why the battle for the House Speaker position is about ending the D.C. swamp and ultimately about protecting the American people.
How Many “First” Visions?
(Video added 1/2023 – Imported here 4/2014 [originally posted HERE 12/2007])
(above) Joseph Smith’s Handwritten Account of His Vision in His Diary
Ronald Said (an old debate many yearn ago):
“And about what Joseph Smith believed, he SAW the Father and Jesus Christ, at the same time. He saw that they had bodies like ours, except glorified….To say that Joseph Smith believed that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost were the same is laughable, at best.”
Well, I will quote again the latter part of your comment for clarity, “To say that Joseph Smith believed that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost were the same is laughable, at best.”, unfortunately you are laughing at the Book of Mormon. I added nothing to this book, or took anything out. So when you laugh, you’re laughing at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Secondly, the “vision” that defines for you who God (and his subsequent nature) is commonly referred to as the First Vision, is very important to LDS theology. And separates it from historical Christianity. The First Vision sets up the following, and thus Smith’s
- Prophetic authority,
- Teaching concerning the nature of God, and
- Condemnation of historical Christian beliefs is all dependent upon the credibility of this first vision account.
I would invite anyone who can examine evidence and delineate between what is truth and what is false [who were reading this real-time exchange… slightly edited for readability]. However, this invitation excludes Ronald because he already knows it to be true… how? Due to a feeling he received in his chest when he prayed over the book of Mormon. His only criterion is a sensation, which, if allowed or caused by a fallen angel, Ronald would have no recourse in testing this phenomenon.
Keep in mind that the Mormon Church believes in a form of tri-theism. In other words, the Father has a body of flesh and is a completely separate being than from Christ. Christ has his own body and was in fact born (by sexual union) by heavenly mother in heaven (the Planet Kolob) ~ [could you imagine Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard teaming up!?]. If Christ was not born, Heavenly Father would still be God, they are separate – corporeal – beings. And the Holy Ghost is a God as well, but has a spirit body, still quite discernible. I presume much like Casper the Friendly Ghost’s body. [For more info, see my 4 Trinity Posts on page 3]
The First Vision
Smith’s official account of this pivotal event was published in Times and Seasons in 1842, twenty-two years after the episode allegedly took place. This account is now published in the Pearle of Great Price, and is accepted as Scripture by Mormons. However, Mormon authorities suppressed at least three additional earlier accounts of the first vision, all by Smith, because they contradicted the “official” story. And the official first vision was not published until 1840.
For example, the earliest account we now posses, from 1832, varies in key details from the official 1842 version. There are discrepancies in Smith’s age, in the message given and the number of divine personages in the vision. There are also details added, such as the presence of an evil power, Smith’s reason for seeking the Lord, and the existence of a revival. All this lends serious doubt to the credibility of the official account.
Consider for instance, the divine persons in the revelation. In this version (1832) only “Jesus” appears. What happened to God the Father? The first handwritten account of Joseph Smith does not even mention the existence of the Father – who plays so crucial a role in the official version.
It is absolutely impossible for us to believe that Joseph Smith would not have mentioned the Father if he had actually appeared…. We feel that the only reasonable explanation for the Father not being mentioned in the account that was suppressed is that Joseph Smith did not see God the Father, and that he made up this part of the story after the writing of the first manuscript. This, of course, throws a shadow of doubt upon the whole story.
Consider yet another of Smith’s accounts written between 1835 and 1836. In this case there is no mention of God or Christ at all – only many spirits who “testified” of Jesus. But here again, the authority of the account – and of Mormonism’s “divine origin” – is called into question. No longer is it God and Jesus telling Joseph Smith to begin a new church because all the others are abominations; it is now only a group of nebulous “spirits.” why should anyone accept the word of a fifteen-year-old boy claimed he talked with some unidentified spirits? Even if he did, why should anyone trust such spirits in the first place? If my fifteen-year-old boy claimed he saw a vision of God or Jesus giving him divine authority, why should Mormons believe him?
So what do we have?
We now have three different handwritten manuscripts of the first vision. They are all written by Joseph Smith or his scribes and yet every one of them is different. The first vision account says there was only one personage. The second account says there were many, and the third says there were two.
The LDS Church accepts the one with two personages. If I were to accept one, it would be the first account. It was written six or seven years closer to the event. Also, this account, which mentions only one personage (Jesus), is the only account in Joseph Smith’s own handwriting (his diary).
In fact, as Fawn Brodie explains:
The description of the vision was first published by Orson Pratt in his Remarkable Visions in 1840, twenty years after it was supposed to have occurred. Between 1820 and 1840 Joseph’s friends were writing long panegyrics; his enemies were defaming him in an unceasing stream of affidavits and pamphlets, and Joseph himself was dictating several volumes of Bible-flavored prose. But no one in this long period even intimidated that he had heard the story of the two gods. At least, no such intimidation has survived in print or manuscript…. The first published Mormon history, begun with Joseph’s collaboration in 1834 by Oliver Cowdery, ignored it altogether… Joseph’s own description of the first vision was not published until 1842, twenty-two years after the memorable event….
If something happened that spring morning in 1820, it passed totally unnoticed in Joseph’s hometown, and apparently did not even fix itself in the minds of members of his own family. The awesome vision he described in later years may have been the elaboration of some half-remembered dream [keep in mind his first account in his diary] stimulated by the early revival excitement and reinforced by the rich folklore of visions circulating in his neighborhood. Or it may have been sheer invention, created some time after 1834 when the need arose for a magnificent tradition to cancel out the stories of his fortune-telling and money-digging.
So no one besides Joseph Smith in his diary even mentioned this vision for twenty years!? Unlike the resurrection report of Jesus, we have papyri dating to A.D. 55, Dead Sea scroll illusion dating to A.D. 49, and early creeds and catacomb writings dating to A.D. 44. These all describe the resurrection (as well as the belief that Jesus was God almighty). These are all based on earlier beliefs, so we can get the date even closer. But the point is this; such an event is well remembered and talked about. For the most important foundation for the origin of the Mormon Church to not even be mentioned in the throes of massive copying and writing seems to be the most serious objection to the vision being valid.
And, like I have shown, the Mormon Church has made sweeping changes to the Book of Mormon and Doctrines and Covenants, as well as other important Church writings. So it wouldn’t surprise me if they massively tampered with the official account of the first vision as well. This all shows that the foundation for the existence of the Mormon Church is called into question. But that’s okay Ronald, you can grasp onto that “burning in the bosom,” cause it’s all you got buddy.
Bill McKeever: The Historical Approach
000000000000
Babies Hears for the First Time (*tears*)
This was posted originally in May 2010, But I have updated the single video with two compilations many years later. Originally this was with a hat-tip to NewsBusters. One of my favorites is this one, BTW
Baby hearing for the first time with hearing aids in this cute babies hearing for the first time compilation. Baby hears mom and dad in the most cute and touching baby clips.
Deaf People Hearing Sound for the FIRST Time [Compilation]
Andrew Klavan Gives His Testimony (One For Israel)
(Read more at BISHOP’S ENCYCLOPEDIA) …. Klavan got baptized at the age of fifty. This frightened him given his nominal Jewish background,
“One of my biggest fears confronting baptism—took me five months to work through it—was I didn’t want anyone to think I was turning my back on Jews, trying to escape my Jewish identity. The default mode with some Jews is to assume you’re trying to “pass as gentile” or blend in or that you hate your Jewishness and are joining the enemy. All understandable, because the Jews are the most mistreated group of people on the face of the planet and some of that trouble has come out of Christian sources, which stinks. Oddly, though, accepting Jesus made me feel more Jewish than I ever had, religiously at least. I had no connection to the Old Testament particularly, until I accepted the New.”
Today Klavan is an outspoken Christian and has since authored a book called The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ (2016).
Ben Shapiro Interview of Klavan
Author, screenwriter, and Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan joins me to discuss the craft of writing novels, how he went from being “intellectually agnostic” to deeply religious, and why he decided to out himself as a conservative Christian in Hollywood.
A New Years Miracle Many Years Ago (One For Israel)
Born in 1944 Rivka Lazarowitch endured great trials to follow her Messiah Yeshua, and today she stands with Him in Glory. Rivka has passed from this life to life eternal, and heaven is lit up a little brighter by her smile. Join us as we celebrate her life, the testimony of Her Messiah and the Joy of her salvation. Help celebrate her life by sharing her story of faith.
Billionaire’s Club De-Population “Secret” Meeting 13 Years Ago
A 13-year old article is making it’s rounds and I thought it worthwhile to post it here – in full with links to comments/posts on it. This is from ARCHIVE TODAY via REDDIT: Here are some comments taken from REDDIT before the SUNDAY TIMES article.
- The word ‘philanthropist’ now has negative connotations, whenever I see it next to someone’s name I shudder.
- The word has always been a whitewash of ‘Robber Baron.’
- But Bill Gates is a new breed – the Philanthro-capitalist. He doesn’t give money to charities, he gives money to corporations, so he can use them as part of his plans. Lots of money to media for favorable attention, for example.
- i prefer philanthropaths – it has that sinister ring to it
- We need to familiarize ourselves with search engine alternatives
- Real life James Bond villain[s].
IGOR’S SUBSTACK has more
INDEPENDENT SENTINEL has more
John Harlow, Los Angeles, Sunday May 24 2009, 1.00am BST, The Sunday Times
TITLE: Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation:
SUBTITLE: America’s richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a ‘disastrous’ environmental, social and industrial threat
SOME of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.
The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.
Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.
These members, along with Gates, have given away more than £45 billion since 1996 to causes ranging from health programmes in developing countries to ghetto schools nearer to home.
They gathered at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize biochemist and president of the private Rockefeller University, in Manhattan on May 5. The informal afternoon session was so discreet that some of the billionaires’ aides were told they were at “security briefings”.
Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said the summit was unprecedented. “We only learnt about it afterwards, by accident. Normally these people are happy to talk good causes, but this is different – maybe because they don’t want to be seen as a global cabal,” he said.
Some details were emerging this weekend, however. The billionaires were each given 15 minutes to present their favourite cause. Over dinner they discussed how they might settle on an “umbrella cause” that could harness their interests.
The issues debated included reforming the supervision of overseas aid spending to setting up rural schools and water systems in developing countries. Taking their cue from Gates they agreed that overpopulation was a priority.
This could result in a challenge to some Third World politicians who believe contraception and female education weaken traditional values.
Gates, 53, who is giving away most of his fortune, argued that healthier families, freed from malaria and extreme poverty, would change their habits and have fewer children within half a generation.
At a conference in Long Beach, California, last February, he had made similar points. “Official projections say the world’s population will peak at 9.3 billion [up from 6.6 billion today] but with charitable initiatives, such as better reproductive healthcare, we think we can cap that at 8.3 billion,” Gates said then.
Patricia Stonesifer, former chief executive of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which gives more than £2 billion a year to good causes, attended the Rockefeller summit. She said the billionaires met to “discuss how to increase giving” and they intended to “continue the dialogue” over the next few months.
Another guest said there was “nothing as crude as a vote” but a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.
“This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,” said the guest. “They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming.”
Why all the secrecy? “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,” he said.
“The Woman King” Might Not Be What You Think | Larry Elder
Hollywood Lies vs History Truth: Movie “The Woman King” Might Not Be What You Think
Here’s the trailer for the movie “The Woman King” starring Viola Davis, supposedly “based on true powerful events.” Really?
The plot as described in IMDb:
- “A historical epic inspired by true events that took place in The Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries.”
How historical?
Critic Robert Daniels, who mostly praised the film said: “You might wonder how (Director Gina Prince-Bythewood can shape a tale centering the Agojie warriors—an all-woman group of soldiers sworn to honor and sisterhood—hailing from the West African kingdom of Dahomey, when one considers their hand in perpetuating the transatlantic slave trade.”
Other reviews were more blunt about the historical inaccuracies, such as there was, in fact, a band of warrior women in Africa called the Dahomey. And they were fierce, feared and frequently bloodthirsty fighters. But they used that ferocity to kill and conquer other Africans for sale to slave traders. Indeed, the trans Atlantic and the Arab African slave could not have occurred without the complicity of African chiefs who sold conquered Africans do European an Arab slavers.
A review called The Woman King Historical Embarrassment puts it this way: “The movie has been set-up as a having a historical basis, telling the story of the real-life Kingdom of Dahomey in the 18th and 19th centuries…. In reality, Dahomey was a notorious slave kingdom, and not the Pan-African freedom fighters as the movie presents them. They enslaved and murdered hundreds of thousands from other tribes and sold them into the slave trade. Dahomey was renowned as the “Black Sparta,” and was a fiercely militaristic society bent on domination and conquest. Their soldiers struck fear into other tribes all along what is still known as the Slave Coast, as they captured tribespeople from enemy tribes and sold them as slaves.”
In the film, white slavers are the enemy when, in reality, they were business partners with the “women kings.”
The “Historical Embarrassment” review continues:
“Even worse for those who struggle with reality, the Amazons were formed from among the king’s “third class” wives. These were those considered insufficiently beautiful to share his bed and who had not borne children. Awkward!”
“History Vs. Hollywood” writes: “… in real life, the Dahomey are much more the villains than the heroes….The Kingdom of Dahomey was a bloodthirsty society bent on conquest. They conquered neighboring African states and took their citizens as slaves, selling many in the Atlantic slave trade in exchange for items like rifles, tobacco, and alcohol. Many of the slaves they sold ended up in America… There are accounts of Dahomey warriors conducting slave raids on villages where they cut the heads off of the elderly and rip the bottom jaw bones off others. During the raids, they’d burn the villages to the ground. Those who they let live, including the children, were taken captive, and sold as slaves.”
The truth is, as in my written testimony before a congressional committee considering reparations is as follows: Slavery, sadly, has been part of human history since the beginning. Muslim slave traders took whites out of the Mediterranean area and enslaved them in Northern Africa. European slavers took blacks out of Africa and shipped them to the New World. Europeans enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved Asians. Africans enslaved Africans. Even native Americans enslaved other Native Americans…
“The Arab slave trade took more blacks out of Africa (for a time) and for a longer period of time then did the European slavers. In “Prisons & Slavery,” John Dewar Gleissner writes: “The Arabs’ treatment of black Africans can aptly be termed an African Holocaust. Arabs killed more Africans in transit, especially when crossing the Sahara Desert, than Europeans and Americans, and over more centuries, both before and after the years of the Atlantic slave trade. … African slaves transported by Arabs across the Sahara Desert died more often than slaves making the Middle Passage to the New World by ship.”
Barbara Walters: “I Regret not Having More Children”
The Disturbing Reality of Cobalt Mining (Joe Rogan)
Siddharth Kara is an author and expert on modern-day slavery, human trafficking, and child labor. Look for his new book, “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives,” on January 31, 2023
I updated my “EV Car Batteries“ section of my post with this.
BATTERIES
In an excellent post linking to a German documentary (30-minutes) and study showing the devastation to Chili of lithium mining, we find the following:
German ZDF public television recently broadcast a report showing how electric cars are a far cry from being what they are all cracked up to be by green activists.
The report titled: “Batteries in twilight – The dark side of e-mobility” [now not available] shows how the mining of raw materials needed for producing the massive automobile batteries is highly destructive to the environment. For example, two thirds of the cobalt currently comes from the Congo, where the mining rights have been acquired by China. Other materials needed include manganese, lithium and graphite.
Every electric car battery needs about 20 – 30 kg of lithium.
The mining of the raw materials often takes place in third world countries where workers are forced to work under horrendous conditions and no regard is given to protecting the environment. When it comes to “going green”, it seems everything flies out the window….
- The production of lithium through evaporation ponds uses a lot of water – around 21 million litres per day. Approximately 2.2 million litres of water is needed to produce one ton of lithium. (EURO NEWS)
AGAIN… here is a Facebook post of the same thing regarding Lithium Fields:
This is a Lithium leach field.
This is what your Electric Car batteries are made of.
It is so neuro-toxic that a bird landing on this stuff dies in minutes.
Take a guess what it does to your nervous system?
Pat yourself on the back for saving the environment.
Chile, 2nd largest lithium producer, is having water-scarcity problems as this technology takes so much water to produce battery-grade lithium. 2000 tons: 1 ton.
And the current version of the “inflation reduction act” wants 100% of EV battery components produced in the US.
Lead, nickel, lithium, cadmium, alkaline, mercury and nickel metal hydride.
Batteries are a collection of things that are extremely deadly.
Alternative fuels/energy is a DIRTY BUSINESS… but the left who live in the seclusion of the New York Times and MSNBC would never know this. I can show a graph showing skyrocketing carbon emissions worldwide for the past decade and that the temperature has dropped during this time by a small amount, and it is like showing them instructions to build an IKEA bookcase with instructions written in Gaelic! 
What about the impact and supply of the materials needed to produce batteries? TreeHugger has a good post that mentions some of these environmental pitfalls. These issues involve many devices we use daily (cell phones, lap-top computers, rechargeable batteries, etc.), but add to this burden a mandated or subsidized car industry:
…lithium batteries take a tremendous amount of copper and aluminum to work properly. These metals are needed for the production of the anode & the cathode, cables and battery management systems. Copper and aluminum have to be mined, processes and manufacturing which takes lots of energy, chemicals and water which add to their environmental burden.
[….]
First of all, this study emphasizes that there would be less Lithium available than previously estimated for the global electric car market. It also states the fact that some of the largest concentrations of Lithium in the world are found in some of the most beautiful and ecologically fragile places, such as The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. The authors note:
“It would be irresponsible to despoil these regions for a material which can only ever be produced in sufficient quantities to serve a niche market of luxury vehicles for the top end of the market. We live in an age of Environmental Responsibility where the folly of the last two hundred years of despoilment of the Earth’s resources are clear to see. We cannot have “Green Cars” that have been produced at the expense of some of the world’s last unspoiled and irreplaceable wilderness. We have a responsibility to rectify our errors and not fall into the same traps as in the past.”
[….]
The report estimates that there would be less Lithium available than previously estimated for the global electric car market, as demand is rising for competing markets, such as cellular telephones and other electronic devices. At the same time, due to a great concentration of Lithium found in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina (70% of the world’s deposits), the United States and other developed countries needing the material will be subject to geopolitical forces similar to those they have already encountered from the member countries of OPEC…
Click HERE to go to larger file (use mouse wheel to zoom in)
In an excellent article we see the projected demands on other metals involved in the battery and transit goals:
….Regarding the demand for the different minerals, in the case of aluminum, according to our results, the demand for minerals from the rest of the economy would stand out, with the requirement for batteries having little influence. Copper would have a high demand from the rest of the economy, but it would also have a significant demand from vehicles, infrastructure and batteries. Cobalt would be in high demand because of the manufacture of batteries with the exception of the LFP battery that does not have this mineral, in the case of its demand from the rest of the economy it can be stated that it would be important but less influential than the demand for batteries. Lithium would have very high requirements from all the batteries and with a reduced demand from the rest of the economy. Manganese would have an important but contained demand coming from LMO and NMC batteries, since the requirements for this mineral would stand out in the rest of the economy. Finally, nickel would have a high demand from NMC and NCA batteries, but its main demand would come from the rest of the economy.
The batteries that would require the least materials are the NCA and LFP batteries. The NMC battery has been surpassed in performance and mineral usage by the NCA. The LiMnO2 battery has a very poor performance, so it has been doomed to disuse in electric vehicles. In addition, the LFP battery, the only one that does not use critical materials in the cathode (other than lithium), also has poor performance, requiring very large batteries (in size and weight) to match the capacity and power of batteries using cobalt.
Charging infrastructure, rail and copper used in electrified vehicles could add up to more than 17% of the copper reserve requirement in the most unfavourable scenario (high EV) and 7% in the most favourable (degrowth), so these are elements that must be taken into account…..
(GEEDS)
Half of all Cobalt made goes into electric cars.
Are Electric Vehicles really clean? | They run on dirty energy and blood of children as young as 6. | Electric cars drive human rights abuse and child labour. | China is one of the villains in this story. | Are electric carmakers equally guilty too? | Palki Sharma Upadhyay tells you.
TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE….
…. lithium is also not the only battery ingredient with a dark side. Perhaps the darkest of all is cobalt, which is commonly used, alongside lithium, in the batteries of many electric vehicles.
More than half of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). According to a 2016 Amnesty International Report, 20% of the cobalt exported from the DRC comes from artisanal mines, in which miners use either their hands or very basic tools to dig out rocks from tunnels deep underground, often for as little as $2 a day.
Worse still, UNICEF estimates 40,000 of the workers in these mines are children under the age of 18, with some as young as 7 years old. Cobalt mining also comes with serious health risks. Chronic exposure to dust containing cobalt can cause the potentially fatal lung disease “hard metal lung disease.” Many fatal accidents have also been caused by mines not being constructed or managed safely.
Clearly then, in the face of such widespread environmental damage and human rights abuses, the ethics of electric vehicles is far more complicated than the expensive car adverts and glowing newspaper headlines would have us believe…..
(VARSITY)
Virginia Magnet School Withheld National Merit Awards (#woke)
A top-ranked Virginia high school is accused of depriving students of National Merit awards because “they didn’t want to hurt the feelings of other students who weren’t being honored.”
More via ACE OF SPADES:
- “Top Virginia Math and Science Magnet School Refused to Tell Students They Were National Merit Finalists, Preventing Them From Putting That on Their College Applications, For the Sake of Racial ‘Equity'”
It’s Harrison Bergeron all the way down.
Virginia parents are outraged after a top-ranked high school allegedly delayed notifying students of national academic honors in the name of “equity,” making them unable to account for the recognition in some college applications.
Fairfax County parent Asra Nomani joined “Fox & Friends First” on Wednesday to discuss why the school delayed the awards and the importance of meritocracy in the classroom.
“This year the entire controversy just blew up because the kids got their certificate, weeks after early college application deadlines, just dropped on their desks as if it was just another piece of paper,” Nomani told co-host Todd Piro.
“And this amazing mom named Shawna Yashar started asking questions, just like every parent’s got to do,” she continued. “From issues of the drag queen story hours to indoctrination in the schools, this is another form of this race to the bottom that the schools are going through right now.”
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) in Alexandria, Virginia, allegedly delayed academic awards for years, according to Nomani, because of its ploy to advocate “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.”
The school has even implemented a policy awarding students a 50% just for showing up to class, and administrators have eliminated zeroes entirely.
The delayed awards in question are given by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which recognizes top-performing high schoolers nationwide. TJ received the 2022 honors in October but did not distribute them to students until a month later, after early-application deadlines had passed, according to Nomani. Nomani’s son, a 2021 TJ graduate, was honored as a Commended Student in September 2020 but was never notified, she wrote in City Journal.
When Yashar, the mother who originally sounded the alarm on the school’s delay, brought the issue to the forefront, she was met with pushback from the school, Nomani said.
“The school wanted to recognize students as individuals, not their achievements, as if the two had to be separated,” she said.
Nomani wrote about this bizarre — and highly litigable — practice at City Journal.
For years, two administrators at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) have been withholding notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s families, most of them Asian, thus denying students the right to use those awards to boost their college-admission prospects and earn scholarships. This episode has emerged amid the school district’s new strategy of “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.” School administrators, for instance, have implemented an “equitable grading” policy that eliminates zeros, gives students a grade of 50 percent just for showing up, and assigns a cryptic code of “NTI” for assignments not turned in. It’s a race to the bottom.
An intrepid Thomas Jefferson parent, Shawna Yashar, a lawyer, uncovered the withholding of National Merit awards. Since starting as a freshman at the school in September 2019, her son, who is part Arab American, studied statistical analysis, literature reviews, and college-level science late into the night. This workload was necessary to keep him up to speed with the advanced studies at TJ, which U.S. News & World Report ranks as America’s top school.
Last fall, along with about 1.5 million U.S. high school juniors, the Yashar teen took the PSAT, which determines whether a student qualifies as a prestigious National Merit scholar. When it came time to submit his college applications this fall, he didn’t have a National Merit honor to report–but it wasn’t because he hadn’t earned the award. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation, a nonprofit based in Evanston, Illinois, had recognized him as a Commended Student in the top 3 percent nationwide–one of about 50,000 students earning that distinction. Principals usually celebrate National Merit scholars with special breakfasts, award ceremonies, YouTube videos, press releases, and social media announcements.
But not at TJ. School officials had decided to withhold announcement of the award. Indeed, it turns out that the principal, Ann Bonitatibus, and the director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, have been withholding this information from families and the public for years, affecting the lives of at least 1,200 students over the principal’s tenure of five years. Recognition by National Merit opens the door to millions of dollars in college scholarships and 800 Special Scholarships from corporate sponsors.
I learned–two years after the fact–that National Merit had recognized my son, a graduate of TJ’s Class of 2021, as a Commended Student in a September 10, 2020, letter that National Merit sent to Bonitatibus. But the principal, who lobbied that fall to nix the school’s merit-based admission test to increase “diversity,” never told us about it. Parents from earlier years told me that she also didn’t tell them about any Commended Student awards. One former student said he learned he had won the award through a random email from the school to a school-district email account that students rarely check; the principal neither told his parents nor made a public announcement.
…
“Keeping these certificates from students is theft by the state,” says Yashar. Bonitatibus didn’t notify parents or the public. What’s more, it could be a civil rights violation, says local parent advocate Debra Tisler, with most TJ students in a protected class of “gifted” students, most of them racial minorities, many with disabilities, and most coming from immigrant families whose parents speak English as a second language….
In a call with Yashar, Kosatka admitted that the decision to withhold the information from parents and inform the students in a low-key way was intentional. “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements,” he told her, claiming that he and the principal didn’t want to “hurt” the feelings of students who didn’t get the award.
Sue them. Sue them personally, if possible.
Dr. Kerryn Phelps’ Vaccine Injuries: The MSM’s Silence Is Deafening
Dr Kerryn Phelps has revealed that she and her wife Jackie Stricker-Phelps have suffered severe adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine.
SPECTATOR UK has more:
…but-but-but we’re not one of those crazy, far-right, neo-Nazi, conspiracy theory, cooker, anti-vaxxers!!! We really did suffer from serious vaccine side effects!’
The words might not have been said out loud, but you can almost hear the hasty mutterings taking place after Dr Kerryn Phelps came out yesterday and admitted that both her and her wife have been suffering serious side effects from their Covid shots.
Indeed, today’s Sydney Morning Herald is running their Phelps article with the title: Not anti-vaxxers: Dr Kerryn Phelps says she suffered COVID vaccine injury, calls for more research.
Phelps and her wife took the Pfizer vaccine in July of 2021 and fell ill shortly after.
‘I have had CT pulmonary angiogram, ECG, blood tests, cardiac echogram, transthoracic cardiac stress echo, Holter monitor, blood pressure monitoring and autonomic testing. In my case the injury resulted in dysautonomia with intermittent fevers and cardiovascular implications including breathlessness, inappropriate sinus tachycardia and blood pressure fluctuations.’
Yesterday’s news.com.au exclusive titled: Dr Kerryn Phelps reveals ‘devastating’ Covid vaccine injury, says doctors have been ‘censored’ has come as a shock to the luvvie media. I suspect the readers of this magazine will be less surprised by the revelation that medical professionals have been keeping quiet about their negative experiences with the vaccine.
Perhaps most damning of all is Phelps’ confirmation of what people have been saying for the best part of a year – that the Therapeutic Goods and Drugs Administration have not been stringently following up on reports of adverse reactions and so potential cases do not make it into official statistics – which are then quoted as proof of ‘safety’. We used to call this ‘turning a blind eye’.
If this is true, and Australia’s vaccine injury statistics are incomplete due to a failure on behalf of the TGA, then all subsequent claims about vaccine safety are rightly called into question. A story like this should be at the top of the Prime Minister’s list, but so far Albanese has not questioned the TGA or Pfizer.
Phelps continues in her comments to news.com.au:
‘This is an issue that I have witnessed first-hand with my wife who suffered a severe neurological reaction to her first Pfizer vaccine within minutes, including burning face and gums, paraesethesiae, and numb hands and feet, while under observation by myself, another doctor and a registered nurse at the time of immunisation.
‘I continue to observe the devastating effects a year-and-a-half later with the addition of fatigue and additional neurological symptoms including nerve pains, altered sense of smell, visual disturbance and musculoskeletal inflammation. The diagnosis and causation has been confirmed by several specialists who have told me that they have seen ‘a lot’ of patients in a similar situation.
‘Jackie asked me to include her story to raise awareness for others.
‘We did a lot of homework before having the vaccine, particularly about choice of vaccine at the time. In asking about adverse side effects, we were told that “the worst thing that could happen would be anaphylaxis” and that severe reactions such as myocarditis and pericarditis were “rare”.’
Of course, those who refused the vaccine because ‘they did their own research’ were relentlessly mocked and ridiculed by government officials, health authorities, and the press.
The former Member for Wentworth, former Councillor of the City of Sydney, former Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney, and the first woman to be elected president of the Australian Medical Association is a difficult public figure to ignore when she claims that the true rate of Covid vaccine side effects are ‘far higher than acknowledged due to under-reporting and “threats” from medical regulators’…..
IVERMECTIN AND HCQ UPDATES
190 ivermectin COVID-19 studies, 140 peer reviewed, 93 comparing treatment and control groups. Recent:Sobrinho Naggie de la Rocha Boschi De Forni Ochoa-Jaramillo PRINCIPLE. ACTIV-6 TOGETHER PRINCIPLE COVID-OUT. Ivermectin was adopted for early treatment in all or part of 22 countries (39 including non-government medical organizations).
454 HCQ COVID-19 studies, 356 peer reviewed, 374 comparing treatment and control groups. Late treatment and high dosages may be harmful, while early treatment consistently shows positive results. Negative evaluations typically ignore treatment delay. Some In Vitro evidence suggested therapeutic levels would not be reached, however that was incorrect [Ruiz]. Recent:Cosentino Alosaimi Shahrin Flores-Chavez Landsteiner de Sampaio Amêndola Bubenek-Turconi Sukumar. HCQ/CQ was adopted for early treatment in all or part of 41 countries (57 including non-government medical organizations).