The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Monday, March 9, 2026
Yes, that’s me at 16 (in 1960!) with Tangamashi, a Shuar Jivaro chief who adopted me into his clan. The Jivaros are the only people on earth who make a shrunken head of their enemies killed in battle – called a “tsantsa.”
They inhabit the Amazon rain forests of the Ecuador-Peru border; living with them was the first adventure I had by myself alone. Tangamashi accepted me, taught me how he made a tsantsa from an enemy’s head skin, took me blowgunning monkeys with curare-tipped darts, and introduced me into the Jivaro spirit world with a tea they called “natema” from the Banisteriopsis vine – a very colorful experience. How cool can you get for a 16 year-old kid?
It set me on a path of an adventurous life from which I have never wavered – and there’s no slowing down now. Another great adventure always awaits. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #25, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
The Ice Princess strikes again. Yesterday (12/11), SecDHS Kristi Noem testified to the House Homeland Security Committee where many of the most vile Dirtbag Dems reside.Rep. Shri Thanedar embarrasses himself by DEMANDING Sec. Kristi Noem resign.
She fires back immediately: "I will consider your asking me to resign as an endorsement of my work."Absolute mic drop. 🫳🏻🎤pic.twitter.com/FRI0CsrAZk
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 11, 2025
The voice you hear calling Noem a liar and demanding she resign is one of them, Shri Thanegar (D-MI), from India who barely speaks intelligible English, has the worst phony wig and eyebrows in Congress, and made millions with sketchy businesses that went bankrupt. He is mentally unsound with his constantly introducing impeachment articles against PDJT, SecWar Hegseth, and soon to come on Noem.
Other DD’s joined in, Dan Goldman accusing her of deporting a “U.S.” veteran when he was never a citizen and self-deported back to South Korea when his green card was revoked under Obama in 2009 due to drug possession.
The hearing ended with Kristi obliterating all the Dems to their faces: “Go do something that actually matters! You ALL should be fired in my viewpoint!”
OK, lots more, and get ready for some good laughs. Jump right on in!
[This Monday’s Archive was first published in TTP on December 29, 2020. We have now operated five of these extraordinary life-memorable experiences. I am 82 now, and although I remain in good health, the sixth early next year must be my last. If you have always dreamed of making a luxury safari in the Serengeti of Africa a part of your life, and would like to make that dream come true with me as so many TTPers have, now is your chance. Especially since my wife Rebel, as the business manager of Wheeler Expeditions, is ready to make special savings for you – see below. Enjoy the photos!]
But return to where? And from where do the great herds start the cycle anew? The answer is the Short Grass Plains of the Serengeti’s far south. It is here where, from January through March, over a million wildebeest congregate en masse as you see in the photo above, not strung out over a hundred miles. For this is their Birthing Season when the herds are replenished with new life.
A Serengeti Birthing Season Safari is unimaginably spectacular. Over 8,000 wildebeest calves are born every day, along with thousands of baby zebras and gazelles. Nearby adults gather around the newborn to protect them from hordes of lions, leopards, and cheetahs on the hunt.
This is by far Africa’s, indeed the world’s, greatest wildlife extravaganza – yet it remains unknown to all but the most experienced African cognoscenti.
Happy Halloween. Meet the Skittles Rebellion In an unexpected twist, trick-or-treat in my town took place a night early this year to avoid a clash with Friday night football. The streets were full of polite kids, most in homemade costumes, proof that American neighborhoods still hum with decency beneath the noise. But a subtle cultural shift was hiding in plain sight. Three separate groups of girls 10 to 12 years old, turned down Skittles for chocolate, explaining, “Synthetic dyes aren’t healthy. Mr. Kennedy says so.” That moment, repeated three times, said more about the next generation than a thousand polls: Generation Alpha and their mothers are quietly choosing RFK over Red Dye 40.
Meanwhile, north on the Hudson, New York is watching a generational revolt of its own. Zohran Mamdani leads the city’s mayoral race, powered by youth, ideology, and viral energy that bypass traditional media channels. Cuomo’s experience and Sliwa’s populism can’t counter a movement that runs on online momentum instead of institutional blessing. Mamdani’s rise marks the old Progressive class fighting to preserve its relevance as digital-age executors we know as builders, coders, and operators supplant the credentialed elites. Like the girls rejecting candy, Mamdani’s voters are rejecting the establishment’s diet, though what they’ll swallow next may be harder to digest.
Across the world, the same tension is visible. Russia clings to fossil-fueled power while America, under Trump’s Pacific realignment, rebuilds alliances grounded in production and execution. Canada throws tantrums while Washington moves steel, energy, and manufacturing back home. The global pattern is clear: symbolic capital is dying; operational mastery is ascendant. From costumed kids to collapsing empires, the message echoes that the age of performance is over; the age of execution has begun.
No more White guilt https://t.co/96GbZYWyGO
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2025
Elon posted this last night (12/09). Here’s the full post and the marvelous memes that followed.
[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on March 8, 2007. Today’s absurdities remain on the same woketard wacko continuum as those back then. We need a break just as before. So here we go, to discuss our place in the Universe.]
TTP, March 8, 2007
I propose we take a break today from the current crop of absurdities.
Liberals destroy respect for the rule of law by gloating over Scooter Libby's lunatic conviction. Conservatives anguish over Ann Coulter using an unacceptable equivalent of "girlieman" to describe John "Breck Boy" Edwards. Liberals see her comment far more immoral than Bill Maher's expressing his regret that the assassination attempt on Dick Cheney in Afghanistan wasn't successful.
I could go on and on, for we seem surrounded by absurdities on every side and they are closing in. We need a break. Let's do so by discussing one of the deepest, most profound questions ever asked:
Where is everybody?
In other words, let's discuss the Fermi Paradox.
It is hard now even for Democrats to defend illegal immigration, given that the Biden administration allowed in more than 10 million entrants. Among them were an estimated 500,000 criminals. No one normal believes that was wise or should ever be repeated.
Worse, the message went out that there would be few, if any, deportations and no real ICE kinetic activity beyond the border.
The world’s poor, sick, both law-abiding and criminal, young and old, understood that anyone could now enter the U.S. at will. Deterrence and legality were lost.
In its place, the message went out that if it was permissible to cross the border unlawfully, then, by extension, it would be seen as equally fine to reside illegally as well—and perhaps further to ignore laws, on the theory that the host had sanctioned all such exemptions.
Indeed, between 2021 and 2024, in the most bizarre episodes in U.S. immigration history, the border simply disappeared. There were to be no background checks, no health audits, and no identification of the greatest influx in any four-year period in U.S. history.
No one knew why. All had their explanations.
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley revealed Wednesday (10/29) that former President Joe Biden’s corrupt Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) compiled what’s being described as an “enemies list” of Republicans to target, including through wiretapping the phones of several high-ranking Republicans as part of their “get-Trump” lawfare.
Grassley revealed more than 1,700 pages of documents provided by whistleblowers, shining further light on the “Arctic-Frost” inquiry. Arctic Frost was an investigation led by the Biden administration to, as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland explained, “target Republicans in key battleground states.”
Then FBI Director Christopher Wray sent a memorandum to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland claiming that “fraudulent certificates of electors’ votes were submitted to the Archivist of the United States” for Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Wray also asserted that these votes were part of a grand conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election.
Jack Smith relied on this investigation as the basis for his anti-Trump lawfare, through which he attempted to both put the then-former president in jail and spy on the entire Republican political apparatus. Grassley made public the 197 subpoenas sought by Smith.
This sounds like treason https://t.co/u8vAq6MMyN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2025
After President Trump’s criticism of Somali abuse, triggered by reporting of massive $1B plus frauds by numerous conservative media outlets, the media has rushed out more of these same stories about Somali accomplishments.
But let’s look at some of the facts.
Somalis are the second largest foreign-born population in Minnesota after Mexicans. 42% of Somalis fall below the poverty line. This is far worse than the 21% poverty rate for African-Americans or any Christian African immigrant population such as Ethiopians (18%) or Nigerians (8%).
40.6% of Somalis settlers in Minnesota don’t even have a high school degree. 40% of Somalis have an income at the 200% federal poverty line. 40% of Somali settlers in Minnesota earn below $35,000. Their median household income is $43,600.
This limits any taxes they are likely to pay and allows them nearly limitless access to welfare.
Donald Trump has demolished an old office wing attached to the White House and begun building a large new ballroom, big enough to accommodate state dinners and other major events. Currently, those have to be held outdoors, under a temporary tent, because the White House lacks a large, permanent space.
Democrats are outraged by Trump’s move. They have filled social media with pictures of the demolition. Oh, the humanity. Tearing down any part of the White House is a travesty, they say, and an assault on one of our cherished national landmarks. They are so enraged that at least one Democrat lawmaker has made tearing down the new ballroom – after it is built and paid for – a litmus test for his party’s 2028 presidential candidates.
Call it BDS – Ballroom Derangement Syndrome. To explain it, we’re going to take a look at Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack.
Fast-forward to 2025 Washington, and one can’t help but see echoes of Veruca in Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG)—once the bleach-blonde firebrand of MAGA, now morphing into the “Blonde AOC,” trading principled conservatism for performative tantrums because President Trump didn’t hand her a Senate endorsement on a silver platter.
What followed wasn't quiet reflection or a pivot back to her House duties—no, it was a full-throated Veruca meltdown. This pattern of petulance isn’t new in GOP annals—it’s the ghost of Paul Ryan haunting Capitol Hill. In Trump’s first term, the Wisconsin “Young Gun” pledged fiscal conservatism but worked overtime to undermine the MAGA agenda.
[I have known Ambrose since the early i990s, when he was the London Telegraph’s US correspondent based in DC. Now he is the Telegraph’s World Economy Editor. Ambrose is at the top of his game in this analysis. –JW]
Vladimir Putin’s predicament is deteriorating fast across every front of the global energy war. Western sanctions are at last going for the jugular, and Donald Trump has finally thrown American power behind the blockade.
The Saudis are flooding the world oil market in a ruthless drive to regain lost share. A glut of historic proportions is building and is likely to last deep into 2027. Goldman Sachs has told clients that Brent crude prices could drop to the low $40s.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has drastically revised its global supply and demand forecasts. China has filled its strategic petroleum reserve to near bursting point and can no longer keep mopping up the surplus. Excess crude is now being stored on water in a giant global armada of floating tankers.
The math is brutal. The IEA expects a jumbo global surplus of four million b/d in 2026. “It is increasingly clear that something has to give,” said Toril Bosoni, head of the agency’s oil and markets division.
That something is the Russian war economy.
Amid an orgy of executions and the accelerating collapse of its economy, the mullahs' regime has driven the Iranian people to unprecedented levels of hardship.
The latest plunge of the national currency to a historic low is not an accident of market forces, nor the consequence of global instability. It is the inevitable result of decades of plunder, corruption, and ideological fanaticism by a ruling clerical mafia whose survival depends on bleeding the nation dry.
In recent days, the U.S. dollar smashed through the 1,250,000-rial threshold (yes, 1.25 million to one dollar)* for the first time (the open market rate everyone pays, the “official” everyone ignores) shattering all previous records. At the time of the anti-Shah revolution in 1979, there were 74 rials to the U.S. dollar. State media declared that the rial "is melting away."
In truth, it is not the rial that is melting, it is the regime itself.
The catastrophic collapse of the rial is the clearest evidence of a regime in terminal decline, clutching at any mechanism, no matter how destructive, to prolong its grip on power.
