The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Monday, May 4, 2026
Want to get this close to a leopard – and safely? Come with me on a safari in Africa and I’ll show you how. Yes, she’s lethal – to the animals she hunts, not you. Yes, you can make such lethal beauty an indelible part of your life.
We really do only live once on this Earth. You really do owe it to yourself to make the most of it. You really can’t take it with you. It really is time to live your dream, to fill your soul with life-memorable experiences. Life lasts but a snap of the finger.
So what adventures have you always dreamed of? Let me know and maybe you and I can make them become real together. I’m only an email away: jack@wheelerexpeditions.com. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #204 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
On Monday (5/23), TIME Magazine will publish its Time 100 issue, listing who its editors, past awardees and readers consider to be the 100 most influential people in the entire world for 2022. Odds are very high that gracing its cover will be the single most influential of all – Volodymyr Zelensky.
Almost singlehandedly, he has rescued his nation of 44 million from obliteration by a foreign evil the like of which Europe has not seen since Nazi Germany, and is on his way to militarily defeating it. He has welded his fractious people into a unified, patriotic whole, creating a fully sovereign Ukraine rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of the horrors of Russian attempts to destroy it over the last three centuries until right now.
If Time had an award for Loser of the Year, no doubt it would be Vladimir Putin. Here’s his consolation prize:
There’s lots more, and not all about Ukraine!
We are witnessing a number of radical military, social, and political revolutions that are changing the United States—and the world—in fundamental ways that we still have not appreciated.
There is also a revolutionary vacuum occurring abroad. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are trying to figure out whether there is still any old-style American deterrence, or whether the woke progressives now in power in Washington dislike the customs and traditions of the United States even more than they do.
In the West in general, and in the United States particularly, we are seeing a final fruition of decades of woke self-loathing.
So what should we expect in the next few years? For example, Ukraine has been our Spanish Civil War for nearly three months, a laboratory of strategies, tactics, and weapons of wars to come. What are the lessons so far from that conflict?
In the span of one month, there were two mass shootings. One perpetrated by Payton Gendron in Buffalo on May 14, the other by Frank James in New York City on April 12.
Both took place in New York. Both were racially motivated. Both shooters were violent extremists. But the media tied only one of them to a mainstream political party. Can you guess why?
This is why.
Some observers think that the United States has committed acts of war against Russia through sanctions, provisions of war materiel, and intelligence and that we are, therefore, partly responsible if Russia is “driven” to attack us with nuclear weapons.
This is not true.
Russia also claims that her “special operations” are not an invasion. Russia claims she is merely trying to “de-Nazify” Ukraine for the good of the Ukrainian people and take the Donbas Region of Russian loyalists, crucial ports on the Black Sea, and anything else she can conquer, as the true sovereign of Ukraine.
If these mendacities are not enough, the Russian propaganda arm is in full swing scaring the daylights out of people with the veiled threat of nuclear war. The United States is not committing acts of war. Instead, we are honoring an agreement we signed with Russia and Great Britain to defend Ukrainian sovereignty.
One of the most galling aspects of the Hunter Biden laptop saga is that the 51 former intelligence officials who played such a critical role in suppressing the news and giving Joe Biden cover before the 2020 election have never been brought to account.
The “Dirty 51” lied by painting the stories as Russian disinformation in an Oct. 19, 2020, letter they signed and delivered to Politico five days after The Post exposé and three days before the final presidential debate of the election campaign.
The arrogance of these Deep Staters tells you that they believe they will get away with lying to influence an election. But there’s one person with a bee in his bonnet who isn’t going to let the story go: Donald Trump.
The former president has sicced uber-attorney Tim Parlatore on the Dirty 51. Yesterday (5/18), Parlatore launched the first stage of a multi-prong strategy to make those who signed the letter pay for the damage they have wrought to freedom of the press, election integrity and the welfare of the nation.
Murugesan is an interesting man because he concedes two important things: (1) working at Twitter has turned him into a leftist because that's the mindset of the entire company, and (2) he's beginning to think Elon Musk is making sense when he says free speech is important. Murugesan's open-mindedness may flow from the fact that he's been experiencing some cognitive dissonance.
According to Murugesan, it's unquestionable that "Twitter does not believe in free speech." However, he hasn't quite grasped that this hostility to free speech is about power and control. Instead, Murugesan attributes it to Twitter's (and Facebook's and Instagram's) unwillingness to allow "bullying and harassment" on the site. As he understands it, free speech is all about preventing "bullying and harassment."
Here´s what Murugesan misses.
Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it. ― H. James Harrington
It is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness in each kind the nature of the particular subject admits. – Aristotle
There is a whole field of study of psychophysiology and biofeedback that is dedicated to helping people learn to control aspects of their physiology, including certain brainwaves, in order to achieve greater relaxation, lowered blood pressure, and other psychological and health benefits.Thomas Jefferson once said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. I would say that goes for the price of self-ownership and effective living, too. Aristotle would also.
Got baby food? Maybe not if its infant formula. Here is why (hint - the FDA did it):
How Bad Government Policy is Fueling the Infant Formula Shortage
Lots more details here:
America’s Infant Formula Crisis and the ‘Resiliency’ Mirage
Babylon Bee on the lighter side of issue:
With Formula Shortage More Babies Switching To Whey Protein Powder
You’ll learn a lot and have fun doing it with this Skye’s Links!
I took my son Brandon on our Indian Tibet expedition when he was 10 years old in 1993. Here we are about to whitewater run the Zanskar River right through the Himalayas. Look at that smile – now there’s an ecstatically happy boy. Wouldn’t you like to see a smile like that on your son or grandson?
You can. Come with me and Brandon with your son or grandson on our Indian Tibet High Adventure – August 14-27, 2022
this summer – or your daughter or granddaughter, ladies are welcome! Don’t say you’re too old – I’m 78!
Indian Tibet 2022 is an absolute true high adventure that both of you will always treasure. Click on the link, absorb the photos, make the experience of actually being there real to you, throw any excuses in the trash, and let me know you’re in. See you in Delhi! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #205 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
Bangaram Atoll, Laccadive Islands, India. The “Lacquered” islands or Laccadives are legendary for the glossiness of the Indian Ocean surrounding them. There are three dozen of these coral atolls over 150 miles off the coast of southwest India – but moorkh Indian bureaucrats insist on calling them “Lakshadweep,” Sanskrit for “100,000. Go figure.
Paintings of the French Impressionists of the 19th century merged dreams and reality. Here that is for real. The beauty in the Laccadives can be so astonishing that it seems surreal – like when the ocean and sky merge into one in a palette of pastels straight from the brush of Monet. Come to Bangaram and you’ll find yourself living inside a painting. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #172 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
This is Mysore Palace, home of the Wadiyar Rajas who ruled Mysore from 1399 to 1950. It is one of the many wonders of Southern India that’s far less known than traveler’s meccas up north like Agra and Rajasthan.
There’s the Nagarhole Tiger Sanctuary, more Asian elephants than anywhere else in the world, over 100 tigers, scores of leopards, their prey in profusion. Christian churches founded by Christ’s disciple St. Thomas in the 1st century AD. Towering Hindu temples covered with tens of thousands of eye-popping multi-colored sculptures. The gorgeous beaches of Goa, the serene peace of the Kerala Backwaters – “one of the most beautiful locations on earth” according to National Geographic, that you explore by luxury houseboat. It goes on and on.
And here also you find the business metropolis of Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India. We did all of this and more a few years ago, and may again in ’21 or ’22. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #81 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
A cliff-top fishing village on the Italian Riviera? Nope, Azenhas do Mar – Watermills of the Sea – is on the Portuguese Riviera. This is a magic place of fairy tale castles, thousand year-old fortresses, luxury boutique hotels, fabulous food, great wine, gorgeous beaches, and postcard-perfect scenery everywhere.
The Portuguese people are among the kindest in Europe, while Portugal is one of the safest countries in the world. Of all the planet’s First World countries, it’s hard to find one more friendly, calm, and welcoming than here.
Who’s the pretty girl? Lucky me – she’s my wife Rebel, mother of our two grown sons, my business partner, and my best friend. We’ve had a home here for many years. Rebel loves Portugal so much she taught herself to be fluent in Portuguese.
If you’d like a personal experience of the best of Portugal, come with Rebel and me on our Portugal Exploration this October. Let me know if you’d like to have too much fun here with your fellow TTPers: jack@wheelerexpeditions.com. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #123 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
