Emord’s Sacred Fire of Liberty, Fairfax County School Board, New GOP investigations, McCarthy speaker vote update, FDA vs CBD, Government censorship, Nutritional Frontiers, Jamie Dorley, Joe Messino, CDC speech police, Alzheimer’s drug irony, Mask mandates returning, UK lockdowns encouraged and MORE!
January 5, 2023 3-5PM ET
Thursday on The Robert Scott Bell Show:
Sacred Fire of Liberty!
It’s that time of the week where we get to explore the political healing that this country needs so desperately! Jonathan Emord is back to help us dissect the latest political news that’s fit to print:
Not Accidental, FCPS Withholding of TJ Student Awards Was Intentional When merit governs, everyone wins. When equity governs, everyone loses. Equity, or equality of outcome, always brings down what is above. The effect is a leveling at the mediocre level, disincentivizing precisely those extraordinary achievers upon whom communities, states, and the nation depend for excellence in every field of endeavor. Equity (or more accurately termed, communism) is a dead end that leaves the great bulk of humanity in poverty, in servitude to the state, and in hopelessness. The Fairfax County School Board and administrators running the Fairfax County Public Schools and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, are rabidly intent on destroying one of the nation’s greatest engines of academic achievement in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Their aim is to replace merit as an objective, unbiased measure with selection and privilege granted based on a racially biased measure (i.e., racial discrimination). The consequence for the last several years has been to discriminate against, and deprive, certain students, particularly Asians with outstanding test scores, of opportunities to attend and be recognized at the school for their excellence. Judge Claude M. Hilton of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a stay against TJ’s change in admission policies, reciting its discriminatory effects, particularly against Asians. Judge Hilton’s decision was itself stayed pending a decision on appeal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Consequently, the discriminatory admissions policy remains in place. The Fairfax County School Board and the Fairfax County Public Schools now proceed unabated in their relentless effort to elevate race over merit in admissions and academic policy throughout the Fairfax County school system and, particularly, at TJ.
IT BEGINS: New GOP majority planning to launch committee to investigative rampant abuse of power by federal agencies House Republicans are planning to launch a new subcommittee to investigate the growing political weaponization of the federal government by the deep state, hopefully with an eye toward defunding the offending agencies if Joe Biden’s Justice Department refuses to hold the officials who run them accountable. The new panel will fall under the House Judiciary Committee and, presumably, will have subpoena power to compel testimony from officials. “Recent revelations about the FBI’s involvement in censorship on social media platforms, which have become public knowledge thanks to the publishing of Twitter’s internal documents, is not the only instance of those abuses, nor is the FBI the only entity that what is currently referred to as the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will look into,” Reclaim the Net reported. “The subcommittee is very likely to be formed because several Republican members of the House have made it one of the conditions to support the election of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker,” the site continued, citing The Wall Street Journal.
McCarthy makes concessions heading into third day of House voting for speaker Fierce Republican infighting over who should be the next speaker has paralyzed the House of Representatives, preventing lawmakers from being sworn in, delaying staff hiring and stalling the GOP’s legislative agenda. On Thursday, the House enters its third day of the new Congress without a speaker under the new GOP majority. Until Republicans have enough votes for a candidate, all other House business remains at a standstill. During the six speaker votes this week, 20 conservatives have stuck together to deny GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California the 218 votes needed to win the speaker’s gavel. Because Republicans won a paper-thin majority in November, nearly all of their 222 members will need to agree on a pick for speaker. The chaotic process moves to a seventh ballot when the House reconvenes at noon on Thursday. But while McCarthy allies and foes remained deadlocked on Wednesday, there were some real signs of progress. After the sixth failed vote, McCarthy and his most trusted allies huddled with his most fervent opponents for more than two hours in the first-floor Capitol office of Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn. Most emerged from the meeting saying there was incremental progress. “I crawl before I walk, I walk before I run,” a still-optimistic McCarthy told reporters after the meeting. “And I felt as though we had a very good discussion.”
FDA regulators are planning to review CBD product regulations in the coming months. In recent years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has taken a stance against selling CBD-based products because it needed more scientific evidence about the safety of such products. However, the agency is now in the process of developing a regulatory assessment for hemp-derived products such as CBD. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Janet Woodcock, the FDA’s Principal Deputy Commissioner and leader of the agency’s cannabis regulation efforts, expressed concern about the safety of CBD and whether current regulatory pathways for food and dietary supplements are suitable for this substance. However, the agency is interested in determining whether it is safe to consume CBD on a daily basis for extended periods of time or during pregnancy. Woodcock mentioned concerns about potential effects on fertility in the future, but, at the same time, his comment signalled that the agency is working to establish regulatory frameworks for the legal sale of appropriate cannabis and cannabis-derived products. The FDA may soon review the available evidence on cannabis and will make a decision in the coming months on how to regulate CBD and other novel cannabinoids. According to the other agency officers interviewed, this decision may involve the creation of new agency rules or the need for new legislation from Congress. Cannabidiol (CBD) is a chemical compound found in cannabis plants. It is one of the main ingredients in cannabis, but unlike THC, it does not cause a high or have psychoactive effects.
U.S. Government Demanded Twitter Suspend 250,000 accounts, Including Journalists Two new “Twitter files” document dumps, released Tuesday, reveal details about how the relationship between Twitter, the U.S. intelligence apparatus, and federal and state agencies was “formalized.” Journalist Matt Taibbi, in a long series of tweets, released the two latest “Twitter files” installments, which he titled, “How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In” and “Twitter and the FBI ‘Belly Button.’” The latest documents demonstrate how Twitter, despite some initial resistance, capitulated to stifling pressure from the government and from complicit media outlets and academic actors to crack down on supposed Russian and Chinese influence on the platform and to ban specific accounts. Such pressure included threats by the Global Engagement Center (GEC) — an arm of the U.S. Department of State — to publicize a list of 250,000 Twitter accounts that were following “two or more” Chinese diplomatic accounts. According to Taibbi, this list was derived from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data. According to Taibbi, in 2017, Twitter quickly “went from believing it did not have a ‘Russia problem’ to permanently allowing the ‘USIC’ [U.S. intelligence community] into its moderation process” — resulting in the large-scale removal of accounts from the platform. In the summer of 2017, “Twitter wasn’t worried” about having “a Russia problem,” Taibbi said. A Sept. 6, 2017, internal email from Colin Crowell, Twitter’s then-vice president of Public Policy, confirmed this, at a time when the “spotlight” was “on FB [Facebook].”
Hour 2
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he CDC Puts Itself in Charge of Language Too The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has come out with a guide for how we are all to speak and write. This can be found on the website titled, “Preferred Terms for Select Population Groups & Communities.” It is clear that this list is being read and distributed broadly – from medical institutions, hospitals, scientific communications, doctor’s offices, schools and universities, as well as other US Government agencies and institutes. The CDC is the arm of the US Government tasked with disease control and prevention. It is not tasked with correcting wrong-speak. Do you read anything in the above that suggests that political correctness or correcting wrong-speak is part of the CDC mission? When did the CDC decide that they should take on the progressive left’s cause to reshape American language (oh, I used that “forbidden” word -”America”, which according to Stanford University- that is now verbotten). I dunno – Maybe there should be some sort of jail penalty for those of us who just can’t get it right. Or maybe, the government should just revoke social media “privileges” or stop people from being allowed to make payments via internet banking services, such as PayPal has done on occasion. According to the website, the CDC has put together this very extensive “list” to protect people from “stigmatizing language.”
Report shares new details about death possibly linked to experimental Alzheimer’s drug The death of a participant in a clinical trial of an antibody treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, which is now under consideration by the US Food and Drug Administration, may be linked to the experimental drug, a new report shows. The research letter, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, shares details about what happened to the participant in the open-label extension phase of the trial of lecanemab. In an open-label extension, there is no placebo arm; rather, all the participants get the medication in question because an earlier part of the trial has shown so much potential. In this case, a 65-year-old who was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s was taken to an emergency room in a Chicago-area hospital within 30 minutes of the first signs of a stroke, the report says. Doctors at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine learned that the patient had gotten infusions of lecanemab four days before. This patient is not the only one to die during the open-arm extension. The health publication Stat reported that an investigator told it about the death of another participant who had bleeding in the brain that may have been related to the drug. In that case, drugmaker Eisai pointed to other possible factors. Lecanemab is meant to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. In November, the company released a study showing that it slowed the progression of cognitive decline by 27% compared with a placebo. It also reduced amyloid levels – a protein that is one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s – and had positive effects on cognition and the ability to perform everyday tasks when compared with a placebo.
Mask mandates return at several NJ school districts Students in several school districts across New Jersey are back from winter break, and back to wearing masks in classrooms. Beginning Tuesday, students and staff in Paterson must wear masks indoors, along with students in the Passaic School District, which reinstated the policy before winter vacation. The Camden City School District also announced a mask mandate for two weeks at 18 of its schools. The move comes in response to the so-called “tripledemic,” as cases of COVID-19, RSV, and influenza spike all around the region. The masks will remain on until further notice in Paterson. Passaic said it would lift that mask mandate when Passaic County is in the moderate or below range in the NJDOH COVID-19 Activity Level Report. Newark, the largest public school district in New Jersey, has not implemented a mask mandate.
Covid lockdown rules must return NOW demands Labour MP after spike in cases Ministers must consider compulsory Covid isolation in a bid to ease the strain on the NHS, a Labour MP has claimed. Rachael Maskell has called on people to isolate if they’re infected, saying “we need” them to do so. The York Central representative, who sits on health and social care committee, says that as well as forcing arrivals from China to quarantine if they test positive, there must be a “discussion” about a return to widespread isolation. She said: “Obviously we need people to isolate if they have got Covid. “It’s really important that they don’t spread that to vulnerable people. So we have to follow through the logic of what this means if people don’t isolate versus if people do. “The whole testing regime was the indicator of actually saying, ‘we can release people who are well’, which is a very positive thing, obviously recognising there is minimal risk, but there is some risk.” Speaking to the Mail Online, she continued: “If people are poorly, then the risk obviously escalates and the impact on others then, is quite significant. “So the principles which public health applied, should not change whatever stage you are of a communicable disease process.” When questioned on whether self-isolation should be compulsory again, Ms Maskell argued: “Ultimately, public health is about managing risk. “And at the moment, it feels like there’s a distraction from certainly the focus the Government were giving Covid and other communicable diseases.
Question of The Day!
Hi Guys,
R.S.B.- Did you purchase the soil amendment or the soil concentrate from Flick Gardens and Greenhouse? I am trying figure out which is best for my two year old garden.I did reached
out to them and no real conclusion was reached.
Thx. BILL
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