The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
TTP honors and celebrates International Women’s Day this week! Where to start, Step One:
Step Two would be to honor and celebrate actual real female XX-chromosome women – and not mentally-ill gender-dysphoric actual real male XY-chromosome men pretending to be women.
Step Three is to ridicule and laugh at woke idiocy claiming that such men are XX-chromosome women.
Such as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders did regarding a man winning an International Women of Courage Award at the White House on Wednesday (3/08):
Step Four would be to denounce tranny-worship as misogyny, hatred and disrespect for real women; define the term “woman” in state and federal law (such as Title IX) as “a person with an XX and not an XY chromosome”; and publicly label anyone who claims a man with a Y chromosome can be a woman as a “biology denier.”
Oh, and demand that Justice Ketanji Brown recuse herself from any SCOTUS case regarding Title IX, as she testified she doesn’t know what a woman is.
There is so much more in this HFR!! Jump right on in… this is going to blow you away!
This is my son Brandon at “The Door of Hell” – the Darvaz Gas Crater in Turkmenistan, one of the “Five Stans” of Central Asia, the ultimate in the remote, the exotic, the unknown full of wonders.
Here you will find the ancient cities of the Silk Road still in all their splendor, and one of the glitziest cities you’ll ever see built yesterday in the middle of nowhere. Here you will find the Mountains of Heaven, the Door of Hell, and the Seven Pearls of Shing.
We explored all five in 2018 and 2019, but then came the Covid Lunacy with the world going wacko over a flu bug. Finally we were able to explore four of the five last September (2022) but Turkmenistan remained closed.
Now we just received word that Turkmenistan is reopening at last – so our Heart of Central Asia 2023 this September will soon be revised – for crossing the Kara Kum Black Sand Desert to spend overnight in a yurt at the Door to Hell, and on to Turkmenistan’s marble capital Ashgabad.
It’s All Five Stans again! Hope you’ll be joining us. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #259 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
It's All FakeHere is a thought exercise:
How fake and inauthentic must information be to be manufactured and inauthentic?]
Everything is fake, from musical performances to Congressional committees and elections to national policies and the science of war.
The English language is poorly equipped to differentiate the degree and direction of inauthenticity, and this is a growing problem.
Tucker Carlson is unleashing the J6 videos on Fox, and the ratings are more significant than for all other television in the same timeslot combined. We are talking about landing on the moon levels of viewership, and the left is in a total freak out.
No doubt, something big will be done to bump the narrative. But now, it's pretty clear that government is as fake as the news.
It is ever more crucial to discern the difference between the real and the fake, to have the courage to state it, and the culture not to tolerate punishment for that courage.
This, my friends, is why you are a TTP member. Come over to Skye's Links and talk about the inauthenticity problem.
When it comes to January 6, 2021, a day cynically cast by Democrats as equivalent to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the depths of the Civil War to smear and target the "deplorable" half of the country, Democrats demand that you believe them, and not your lying eyes.
The reality is that they can't handle your handling of the truth.
That's the dirty secret behind their outrage over House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) decision to fulfill a commitment to release the 44,000 hours of January 6 footage the U.S. Capitol Police had been sitting on—outrage further stoked because the process will begin with reporting on the tapes by the Ruling Class's preeminent bête noire, Tucker Carlson.
Now, the Justice Department also kept a lid on that video footage and in fact, in some cases, DOJ did not share it with criminal defendants who had been charged on January 6 in violation of their constitutional rights.
We felt it was a public service to bring what we could to you. There was no justification for keeping the secret any longer and a powerful argument to be made that sunlight is always and everywhere the best disinfectant and in fact, because it was video evidence, it is to some extent self-explanatory.
Democrats like Chuck Schumer reacted with hysteria, overstatement, crazed hyperbole, red-in-the-face anger. What is that? Well, it's not outrage, of course. It's fear. It's panic. Here’s why – and why the McConnell-Romney GOP is in panic as well.
American society is facing three existential crises not unlike those that overcame the late Roman, and a millennium later, terminal Byzantine, empires.
Most know the result of such Medieval street living is unhealthy, violent, and lethal for all concerned. Yet no one knows—or even seems to worry about—how to stop it.
So public defecation, urination, fornication, and injection continue unabated. Progressive urban pedestrians pass by holding their noses, averting their gazes, and accelerating the pace of their walking. The greenest generation in history allows its sidewalks to become pre-civilizational sewers.
They said it was an absurd waste of time, but now, the progressive coastal regions of Oregon and Democrats in Idaho are getting a little worried about the “Greater Idaho Movement,” with at least 11 eastern Oregon counties officially voting to leave the state and join their more conservative neighbors in Idaho.
Democrats were saying that the move was impossible, but with momentum growing they are now suggesting that the break-up is “bad for the country.”
Yet it makes perfect sense for red counties to want to break away from blue states after the kinds of chaos leftists have created within our nation in the past few years alone. When Dems say this would be “bad for the country” what they really mean is that it will be bad for them.
If people have the ability to choose and take their county and their land with them, why would they stay under the governance of a leftist dominated place?
We can spend a lot of time thinking about what was missing when we were little, or what we wished would have happened; our many desires unfulfilled, things we left unsaid, support we longed for that wasn’t available or wasn’t strong enough.
I’ve known people who spend a good percentage of their lives absorbed in such memories. Their self-concept, their sense of “who I am,” becomes wrapped around “how it was,” until the two are nearly indistinguishable. This is not a good way to live.
The way through is to change the ongoing hurtful patterns that were established in the past, and that we are continuing to some degree in the present. Let’s talk about how to do this.
In the vast valley of Pasargadae there stands this simple tomb with nothing around it for miles and miles. It has been like this for many centuries, for it entombs the founder of Persia, Cyrus the Great (600-530BC). Revered as the liberator of the Jews from their Babylonian captivity in 539 BC, hailed by Herodotus for his humanity and wisdom, this small structure symbolizes the humility of an extraordinary man. Yet the tomb is a structure of engineering genius, the oldest built on principles of base-isolation withstanding the countless earthquakes Persia has suffered for the last 2500 years.
I was first here in 1973 when Persia (renamed Iran in 1933) flourished under the Shah. Here I am in 2014, when everyone I met expressed admiration for America and their contempt for the mullah tyranny they endured. I hope to return once more when the Land of Cyrus will be free again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #146 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
In a remote corner of the Pacific Ocean, off the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia lies one of the world’s great archaeological mysteries: the only ancient stone city built on a coral reef. No one knows who built it or how.
Micronesians say their ancestors called it Soun Nan-leng, The Reef of Heaven. Their name for it today is Nan Madol, the City of Ghosts.
On artificial islets connected by a series of canals are massive walls up to 25 feet high enclosing temples, tombs, ritual centers, and platforms for thatch homes – all made of giant columnar basalt stone. Eons ago, lava flows on Pohnpei cooled into vertical pillars. Over a thousand years ago, ancient Micronesians began hauling these basalt logs miles away to build this stone city. With an average weight of 5 tons, 10,000 pounds – and some up to 25 tons, 50,000 pounds each – how they did this remains unexplained. It lies deserted today, abandoned and lost for centuries.
Paddling a kayak through the canal maze of Nan Madol to clamber over these monumental stone complexes in solitary silence – for visitors are rarely here – leaves you in a state of unforgettable awe. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #6 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
The Salar de Uyuni, 12,000 feet high in the Altiplano of Bolivia, is a 4,000 square mile expanse of salt so flat it is used to calibrate the altimeters of NASA observation satellites of the earth. After a rain, it becomes the world’s largest mirror, 80 miles across. The incredible reflective surface extends to the horizon in every direction – it is both hallucinatingly disorienting and makes for amazing mirror-to-horizon photos (especially at sunrise/sunset).
The brine underneath the salt crust contains 70% of the world’s lithium – critical to our battery-fueled global economy – produced in evaporation pools that are a kaleidoscope of colors.
You can stay here in relative luxury at one of the world’s most unique hotels – the Palacio de Sal, built entirely of salt: walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, sculptures. Being here is one of South America’s more astounding experiences. Let me know if you want a Wheeler Expedition to take you there! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #39 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
Mulafassur waterfall below the village of Gasadalur is only one example of the serenity of the Faroe Islands. They’re a self-governing Danish possession in the North Atlantic halfway between Norway and Iceland. You won’t find a place of more captivating serene and peaceful charm.
Warmed by the Gulf Stream, in the summer it’s so strewn with wildflowers the roads are known as “buttercup highways.” At every turn along them you’re stunned by the incredible scenery. The capital of Torshavn is so laid back the Prime Minister’s Office – the Løgmansskristovan – is a wood cabin with a green grass sod roof. Great beer from the Faroes’ two breweries is always flowing in the pubs, where the Faroese islanders welcome you like an old friend.
You can easily fly here from Edinburgh, London, Copenhagen, or Reykjavik, Iceland . A few days here will do wonders for your soul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #18 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
"In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and lost everything: security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again."--Edward Gibbons, on the fate of Ancient Greece.
Things fail, and sometimes things fail bigly. Back in the days of Athens, civic virtue fell, and this is undoubtedly happening today.
This week's HFR looks at the failure of the things the left counts on to gain ultimate control. Take A.I., for instance; central planners hope that the computer algos will lead to total control of the world's emotions and thoughts.
Sure, A.I. can do many cool things, but it can't identify fitness for purpose. It produces answers to questions and artwork without the underlying meaning. Given the enormity of available data, it is surprising how clunkish and unnatural it becomes when asked to innovate. It cannot.
The power grid is in serious trouble as EGS, and federal mandates will begin to remove much of the base generating capacity within the next few years. In the end, people will not stand for it. But until then, you might think about a backup power source. Regulations are cutting deeply into the small generator supply, and shortages have emerged. They will get worse, with some jurisdictions requiring licenses and fees on generators. Be proactive.
Wokism is fumbling as Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind Dilbert was banned almost everywhere. It's not what he said that caused the ban; he occupied a box to be checked before the 2024 election.
His response? Rather than grovel and promise to support Biden in 2024, he gave it up. He went off to Galt's Gulch. We will see more of this as people expect it to be canceled. Cancellation is now being factored into career planning.
Institutions failed the world badly, as shown during Covid. The Duning-Kruger Effect is essentially to blame. Moderately qualified people tend to have much more confidence in themselves and their roles than highly talented people. We learn through Congressional testimony that government policy was distilled down to whatever conservatives proposed, but the government did the opposite.
So poorly prepared were the leaders at the CDC and other institutions that these leaders could not envision that actual scientists stood for fundamental research. Somehow, no quality score was placed on research, so the work of the political hack was valued more than the deep research of actual scientists.
We live in a technological world, and this is no way to manage technical problems.
Finally, there is light emerging from the void. The voters fired Lori Lightfoot. Even Chicago natives are getting tired of violent crime. Lori's failure probably ruined the chances for the next unqualified black lesbian in Chicago.
Bye Bye, Lori; it's time to roll up our sleeves and save the country. It will help if you stay out of the way.
