The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
A lot happened during 2022, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to political shenanigans, even worse economic shenanigans, and the nationwide breakdown of law and order.
Each is connected to a widespread loss of trust in governments, businesses, schools, and the neighbor down the street. We are rapidly changing from a high-trust society to something else.
Three megatrends are emerging. The first is the sudden step-like change in chatbot sophistication that threatens to replace the great libraries of free and open-source information with machine-curated global narratives. Drag shows in public libraries intended to withdraw public support and the destruction of monuments are features of the shift to the singular narrative.
Loss of trust in commercial institutions is everywhere. We long suspected and compiled evidence of the collaboration of big tech with big government. Now that Elon Musk is telling the world what has been happening behind the curtain, everything is suspect. Musk is a crack in the narrative; he is the point of failure exposing the massive effort devoted to information control.
The problem for the government is apparent: Propaganda ceases to work once it is known to be propaganda.
All over the world and within most corporations, technology has been used to centralize decision-making at the expense of decision quality. The current trend is to replace the mind with a computer algo. The consequence is a dramatic decline in innovation.
Without innovation, there is nothing to prevent entropy from expanding.
Breaking trust with the current systems creates a foundation for the future. Those that understand this will prosper. Others, including entire corporations and governments, will fail.
Come to the HFR, and most of all, Happy New Year!
Welcome to the final 2022 edition of Skye’s Links! After all the downers of this year, there’s plenty of good news to report at year’s end. We start with something written by a man known as The Sea Gypsy Philosopher, who strives to be The Three Ps – Powerful, Provocative and Poetic. I think you’ll agree he succeeds.
Here is a lovely Christmas message to Greta Thunberg. Her puppet masters will never allow her to see it, but you should do so. It is a message of hope. It is also a message that the oligopoly of censorship can no longer control. And that is very good news:
Good news! Honest liberal Tabbi, the man that Musk chose to release and explain the Twitter Files, is optimistic that we are finally moving in the right direction for information freedom. It isn't just Deep State/Twitter cooperation; there are far more quislings, and they will soon be exposed:
Matt Taibbi Reflects On "Repulsive, Horrifying, Dystopian" World Run By 'Anti-People'
Come on in! There’s lots more!
Two hundred and thirty-one years ago this month, America's founders enshrined free speech as the first protection in the ratified Bill of Rights with a declaration that the government could not infringe expression.
A series of blockbuster revelations at the end of 2022 show just how imperiled those protections have become in the era of Big Tech.
From Elon Musk’s "Twitter files" to an FBI agent's candid testimony, Americans have gotten a glimpse into a once-hidden enterprise where federal agencies pressured social media platforms – directly and through proxies – to censor content under their terms of service.
The goal, it appears, was to preserve the ruling elite's favored narratives on everything from the pandemic to election integrity.
This week, Arizona leftists and RINOs admitted, under oath, that they changed the print settings, on election morning, so Republican votes would not be tabulated, on the one day most Republicans vote -- and the Maricopa County judge said “…it wasn’t intentional.”
A Republican governor candidate who easily won by multiple points was denied her rightful election. Several million Arizona voters were disenfranchised.
Not a word from Republican leaders!
Wake up, America.
Leftists and RINOs have spent the last 40 years transforming election machinery to end your right to vote -- and they are about to finish the job.
Did you know that in fiscal year 2022, federal tax receipts as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) hit a near record high of 19.6 percent?
According to the U.S. Treasury, in FY 2022, total federal tax receipts and additional federal government revenue topped $4.90 trillion. Yet, over this time, Congress spent $6.27 trillion. The difference, the 2022 deficit, was $1.37 trillion.
Presently, the U.S. national debt is over $31.4 trillion. In December 2000, the national debt was $5.6 trillion. Over the last 22 years the U.S. national debt has increased 460 percent. U.S. GDP over this same time, however, increased just 157 percent, from about $10 trillion to 25.7 trillion.
That’s how the U.S. government works in the 21st century, where near record tax receipts will never be enough. Why? Because your government hates you so much it thinks it has a moral right to steal as much as they want from you.
After four years of legislative malfeasance by Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat myrmidons, the Republicans will soon have a 222–213 majority in the House of Representatives.“Who are these five boneheads? How can they be so stupid?”
Fox News host Mark Levin
It should be obvious to anyone with a 3-dight IQ that, to accomplish anything useful with such a narrow majority, the House Republican Conference has to close ranks and prepare for a war with a radicalized Democrat minority that will continue its ongoing effort to undermine the will of the voters.
The new Republican majority will get its first chance to present a unified front on Jan. 3, when the House meets to elect a new speaker to replace Pelosi. Yet a small cadre of GOP opportunists vows not to vote for the only realistic choice — current Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Here’s why this is moronic.
Money troubles can tap into the most primitive emotions, including intense fear, and even reactions of flight and panic. But there are ways of using these signals, so we don’t get lost in them.
Matt wakes up in the middle of the night, anxious and troubled. Breathing shallow and high in his chest, thoughts racing… The severity of his financial troubles has just hit him. His investments have dropped significantly, and his spending has been putting him deeply into debt surprisingly quickly.
He’s in trouble, big trouble. Yet the panic is Matt’s friend; his own awareness trying to break through his defenses so he can face the real problems. And there are ways of solving these problems. But nothing happens until he’s willing to acknowledge the reality first.
Why is this panic around money so severe? And how can you use the panic to find solutions? Let’s talk about it….
Yes, that’s me, waving from one of the cave openings on the cliff face honeycombed with 2,000 year-old Sky Caves in a remote region of the Himalayas called Upper Mustang. The photo was taken by one of your fellow TTPers on our most recent Himalaya Helicopter Expedition last May.
Upper Mustang is ruled by the Tibetan Kingdom of Lo, created by Tibetan warrior-king Amne Pal in 1380, with its sovereignty protected today by Nepal from the Chicoms right across the border in Chinese-Occupied Tibet. Lo, with its capital the medieval walled city of Lo Manthang, is where you will find the most traditional Tibetan culture left on our planet.
You can experience it yourself on our Himalaya Helicopter Expedition this spring. If not now, when? Carpe diem.
(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #250 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
This is Durnstein Castle, perched on a precipice high above the Danube River in Austria some 60 miles upriver from Vienna. Built in the early 1100s, here is where King of England Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned, having been captured by his enemy Leopold V of Austria on his return from the Third Crusade in the Holy Land.
The story is well known of how Richard’s brother John had usurped the throne and impeded paying Richard’s ransom – and the legend of Robin Hood raising the money pilfering it from thieving nobles. The ransom was finally paid in 1194, with Richard returning to be crowned King of England once again. The castle fell into disrepair, uninhabitable since the late 1600s. It is an eerie journey back into history to explore it today. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #197 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
Rising 600 feet above the jungles of central Ceylon (Sri Lanka) is a gigantic rock column revered for millennia as Sigiriya – Lion Rock from Sanskrit. It’s flat on top, used over centuries as a Buddhist monastery and a fortress by kings. In 480, King Kashyapa had the image of a lion carved into the rock as the entrance gate to his fortress-palace on top. All that’s left are the lion’s paws that you see.
It was a risky climb via stone stairs carved into the rock getting to the top. Today there’s a much safer wooden staircase. It’s a pilgrimage site for Sri Lankans where they get to celebrate their history and enjoy the gorgeous view on top. It’s a marvelous experience for you to participate in. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #158 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
The Antarctic island of South Georgia is home to a million King penguins, plus countless fur seals, gigantic elephant seals, staggering numbers of seabirds such as albatrosses, amidst a backdrop of towering mountains with massive glaciers spilling off them.
Nothing can prepare you for the incomprehensible size of the penguin rookeries here, densely packed as far as the eye can see (all those white dots on the hills behind are penguins). Nor for the size of bull elephant seals weighing up to 8,000 pounds, especially when they rise up and crash their chests against each other in mating challenges emitting deafening bellows. Nor being surrounded by a thousand fur seals unafraid of you. The density of wildlife combined with the magnificent beauty of the island is completely overwhelming.
Here also is the abandoned whaling station of Grytviken where the heroic explorer Ernest Shackleton is buried. You can only get here by expedition cruise ship. South Georgia is one of the great experiences on our planet. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #96 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
Go down to the Atlantic coast beach of Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott at sunset, and you’ll see a very unusual fish market. A fishing boat laden with the day’s catch is ready to come ashore, but the crew is afraid the wind and surf may capsize the boat as they do, losing their catch in the process.
So they float just outside the surf line so buyers with boxes and baskets can wade out to buy the fish right off the boat, and wade back. Only when the boat is empty will the crew attempt to beach it. Just one of this West African country’s intriguing sights.
.(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #249 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
Welcome to the Christmas HFR!
Sorry to open with a bummer, but it’s unavoidable. For the whole year of 2022 has been one obscene bummer after another, and this is just the last ludicrous straw.
Note what’s carrying the insane $1.7 trillion 4,000-page Omnifarce – the GOP elephant that’s responsible for it. 21 GOP senators voted for it (3 by not voting). And in doing so, by locking in federal spending through next September, they prevented themselves by having any control over spending when the House take spending over 11 days from now.
That’s suicidally stupid, especially when considering the thousands of goodies for lobbyists and woke causes.
Late today (12/23) the House passed with 9 Rinos voting for it. Speaker-to-be McCarthy denounced the vote as “a monstrosity.” Chip Roy of Texas noted that 226 absentee proxy votes were cast, meaning the House lacked a physical quorum as required by the Constitution.
Can we have a lawsuit demanding SCOTUS declare the vote void?
There’s lots, lots more to come in this Christmas HFR….
