The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
The winner:
Believe it or not, the New Hampshire primary is Tuesday. So it probably matters to fully grasp the fallout from Iowa first.
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In the aftermath of Monday’s shellacking, the one and two percenters started dropping like flies ...
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You have probably heard a lot about the Carson flap in Iowa, in which Cruz staffers sent out an email repeating a CNN story that seemed to indicate Carson was done. While the Carson flap has indeed hurt Cruz somewhat, Iowa has helped him more.
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It’s worth noting that Trump did not err in skipping the Fox News debate. It was a gamble, and it certainly would have paid off much better if Rupert Murdoch had caved, leaving Trump the master of the deal and even the media (“if he can negotiate that, he can negotiate anything!”).
It’s the worst and most obvious political snow job in history. The media uses Donald Trump for ratings. Donald Trump uses the media to keep himself front and center in the Republican field, and as an object of two minutes’ hate for his crowd.
The media “attacks” Donald, knowing it will solidify his support with his crowd, and the Donald whines and moans about how “unfair” the media is to him ad nauseam. Lather, rinse, repeat.
You can get a sense for how the media really feels about things when the mask slips, and they say what they really think. With respect to Trump, that happened last week when Chris Matthews let slip his nakedly bigoted remark about not wanting to watch a debate between “two Cuban guys,” Cruz and Rubio.
In the same way, Donald Trump really has no idea what he would talk about if he were suddenly disallowed to claim that the media was being unfair to him. Just see the video clip below.
The symbiotic relationship between Trump and the media in which they pretend to be enemies while they profit off of each other has been great for both Trump and the media, but it’s been terrible and cancerous for the Republican party. Here’s why.
A major reason for the growing distrust of government is the double standard whereby government officials and employees often suffer no consequences from incompetence, misbehavior and even criminal violations of the law.
In the common law, there is a general principle that if a person is damaged by the actions of others through negligence or illegal behavior, he or she has a right to redress.
The actions of government officials and employees are often far more damaging than those in the private sector, but they are protected by “sovereign immunity” and civil service protections.
Sovereign immunity is a “legal doctrine by which the sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution.” It comes from the ancient concept that the “king can do no wrong.”
Since we don’t have kings in America, one way to get rid of much corruption and criminal malfeasance by government bureaucrats would be to substantially get rid of sovereign immunity. Let’s take what’s happened in Flint, Michigan as an example.
Let me tell you the worst thing about the climate change scam.
It’s not the lies, not bullying, not the perversion of the scientific method, not the establishment cover-ups, not the needless scaremongering, not the wasted money, not the nannying overregulation, not the destroyed wildlife and ruined countryside, not the stymied economic growth — bad though all these things are.
No, the worst thing about the climate change scam is that the people making money out of it are the scum of the earth.
It is now the biggest ripoff scam in world history, pulling in $1.5 trillion per annum — not a penny of which goes to anything remotely useful. It is a Potemkin industry, a racket, a form of state-sanctioned organized crime.
Could there be a way to get back some of the money stolen from us by our governments to be spent on their cronies at Solyndra and BrightSource or thrown casually into grants for junk science research like “ocean acidification” or squandered on shysters at tainted institutions like NASA, NOAA and the Royal Society or wasted on anti-capitalist bureaucracies like the EPA and the Department of Energy and Climate Change?
Finally, there is.
You may have heard of the “Brexit” – Britain’s opportunity to leave the EU via a referendum. As early as this June, British voters will be asked this question: "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?"
The odds they will choose the latter greatly improved this week, with the United States slipping behind Great Britain to 11th place in the 2016 Global Index of Economic Freedom.
What is even more striking about the 2016 index released Monday (2/01) by the Heritage Foundation is the shockingly “unfree” state of the European Union.
Greece is 138th – between Bangladesh and Mozambique. Italy is 86th – between Morocco and Madagascar. France is 75th – between Kuwait and the Seychelles, and well behind Ghana and Kazakhstan.
Why would British want to be a part of this any longer?
I’m used to hearing from people in crisis. As a psychotherapist and life coach, it’s part of my business. It may be a crisis in a marriage, a crisis at work, a financial crisis… There are many places for crises to wreak havoc in our lives.
Some crises are unavoidable. We control only so much of what happens in our lives, and sometimes life throws hardship, tragedy, or deeply chaotic circumstances our way.
I don’t make light of or gloss over the realities of life; but I do make it my business to help people to avoid unnecessary troubles, and there is one thing that we can do to prevent some of the more predictable crises of life.
We tend to use the passive voice to describe our troubles: An affair “just happened.” The project “just fell apart.” No author, no identifiable cause. The passive voice puts us at the mercy of events; the active voice is the voice of self-ownership and commitment.
A lack of commitment to our highest values can create tremendous anxiety; and turn every conflict, every decision, and every challenge, into a potential crisis. Every small problem can throw the entire commitment into question… And that is a major source of avoidable crisis.
Now to the practical application, a tangible plan of action for a life without unnecessary crises.
I woke up this morning to a deluge of Forum comments on my Trump Derangement Syndrome yesterday. A large number of them were from Trump supporters who strongly disagreed with me.
They did so with courtesy and grace, with reasoned arguments rather than schoolyard insults. Trump could learn a lesson from them. I can’t thank them enough. We can continue to agree to disagree, and do so with mutual respect. I am so proud of my TTPers.
Which brings me to my gratitude for Rod Martin. Rod has been a dear and close friend of mine for more years than we both care to admit. Ours is a mutual admiration society. And of course, he’s an avid TTPer. Read his bio in the link, and you’ll quickly be excited to know Rod will be manning the HFR helm in my absence. Thanks, Rod!
Here’s the full text of the GOP candidate debate last night (1/29). It was glorious to have a real debate without Trump in the way, a clear demonstration of how much better the whole Pub primary campaign would have been without him.
Trump made a disastrous mistake in wimping out of the debate, afraid of a girl. The Fox debate last night dwarfed Trump’s egomaniacal competing rally, 4.5 times as many, 12.5 million vs. 2.78 million viewers. In fact, the headline is: Debate Without Trump Got Better Ratings Than Last Debate With Trump.
Cruz took advantage and closed the deal with Iowans with what Carl von Clausewitz called the schwerpunkt, the decisive point. At least, that’s what I think will happen Monday. We’ll see.
Under President Barack Obama, the United States has been fundamentally transformed. From the land of the free and the home of the brave, seven years into the Obama presidency, America acts like the land of the overregulated and the home of the risk averse.
In the Middle East, the new America is treacherous, and pathetic. It is despised by its allies and scorned by its enemies. America’s spurned allies are making their peace with its global self-destruction. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t praying that America will come to its senses.
Unfortunately, history cannot wait forever. Time is running out. Incremental change simply will not do. The world is changing too quickly and dangerously for a hesitant successor or one that fails to recognize that the entirety of Obama’s foreign policy must be rejected from the outset.
And so, before the first votes are cast in the 2016 presidential election, who among the candidates has the courage and the competence to enact a counterrevolution in American foreign policy?
Polls confirm that Obama is the most polarizing president in recent memory. There is little middle ground: supporters worship him; detractors in greater number seem to vehemently dislike him.
Why then does the president, desperate for some sort of legacy, continue to embrace polarization?
A few hours before delivering that State of the Union, President Obama met with rapper Kendrick Lamar. Obama announced that Lamar’s hit “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of 2015. The song comes from the album To Pimp a Butterfly.
The album cover shows a crowd of young African-American men massed in front of the White House. In celebratory fashion, all are gripping champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills; in front of them lies the corpse of a white judge, with two Xs drawn over his closed eyes.
To play the old “what if” game that is necessary in the bewildering age of Obama: what if President George W. Bush had invited to the White House a controversial country Western singer, and declared that the singer’s hit song was the president’s favorite in 2008, from an album whose grotesque cover had a crowd of NASCAR-looking, white redneck youth bunched up with an African-American official dead at their feet?
And what if the next day, Bush told the nation that he regretted not being able to bring the country together? Would there have been media calls for Bush’s impeachment?
Tearing the country apart is the unfortunate legacy of Obama—and it will continue in Pavlovian fashion until January 2017.
Hedge funds and private equity groups armed with $60 billion of ready cash are ready to snap up the assets of bankrupt US shale drillers, almost guaranteeing that America’s tight oil production will rebound once prices start to recover.
Daniel Yergin, founder of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, says it is impossible for OPEC to knock out the US shale industry though a war of attrition even if it wants to, and even if large numbers of frackers fall by the wayside over coming months.
“The management may change and the companies may change but the resources will still be there,” he told me here at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The great unknown is how quickly the industry can revive once the global glut starts to clear - perhaps in the second half of the year - but it will clearly be much faster than for the conventional oil.
“It takes $10 billion and five to ten years to launch a deep-water project. It takes $10 million and just 20 days to drill for shale,” he notes. Do the math. OPEC cannot compete.
Do you know what socialism is? Hillary Clinton struggled to find an answer when recently asked.
Socialism is a system in which the government owns or controls the means of production, and allocates resources and rewards.
Sen. Bernie Sanders proudly proclaims himself a “democratic socialist.” Many in the Democratic Party seem to have no problem with this and, in fact, are embracing him and his ideas.
America -- and its unique success as a nation -- was built around individual liberty and opportunity, not collective coercion. All too many no longer understand what the American Founders were trying to, and largely did, achieve. It is a tragedy that too few Americans understand the dangers of unlimited government.
The young people who support Mr. Sanders, and even Hillary, seem to be generally ignorant of why America worked. Many do not want the government to restrict unfettered abortions or their right to smoke pot, but seem to be oblivious that socialism and big government makes everyone into an economic slave.
A marriage, a friendship, a close family relationship… all of our important relationships are built on countless moments, innumerable interactions that either build qualities of trust, joy, and respect - or undermine those qualities.
Today I want to show you what is arguably the most important moment for building a trusting, satisfying, loving relationship. We can often think that what makes a difference in a romantic relationship, or our relationship with our kids, or other friends and relatives, are the big things; the romantic getaway for the weekend, or the great gift that we buy.
…but there is a moment that packs more leverage, more meaning, and more potential for doing good – or harm – than almost any other. It is the moment when…
