The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Friday, February 20, 2026
The World is Lining Up in Trump’s Direction
The recent G7 summit went well for President Trump and the United States. There is a growing acceptance among allies that Trump means business and China is a problem.
They are no longer just China, but Fentanyl China, the destroyer of corporate brands that fail to disengage from the Middle Kingdom’s culpability with 60,000 opioid overdoses per year.
We have a hurricane inbound and it might cause some economic damage. It certainly can cause political damage.
Mass media is having some problems and James Comey is off the hook. For now.
The Great Awakening continues to grow as more Americans come to understand that there are two justice systems in America. One for the elite and one for the plebes.
And let’s talk about leadership. The left doubles down on a single strategy. They employ it everywhere. Conservatives use a palate of styles and we have been known to reject talent because we prefer a different style. TTPers are uniquely brilliant leaders, so let's talk leadership on the Forum. How should Conservatives lead?
Pitcairn Island. It’s a small volcanic rock, two miles long and one mile wide, that emerged from the depths of the Pacific Ocean a million years ago.
1,000 years ago, seafaring Polynesians found it covered with wind and sea borne plant life, like pandanus trees with leaves to make thatch huts, miro and other trees for timber, palm trees with coconuts to eat and drink, and flowers galore, all in wild abundance – and most valuably, volcanic obsidian glass and basalt rock to make tools, items you couldn’t make on the coral atolls inhabited by other Polynesians far to the west.
They settled in, planting taro, breadfruit, and bananas. Trade with the distant atolls flourished – but by 600 years ago, internecine warfare among the atolls caused the trade to collapse, and the island was abandoned.
What has happened since is true legendary history. Let me tell you about it – and the people who live its legacy.
Not long ago, the current presidential contenders opposed open borders, sanctuary cities, and federal funding for abortion. Now they can’t move left far and fast enough.
All politicians are “flexible.” If they are in politics long enough, many reinvent themselves ideologically several times over — given the perceived volatile mood of 51 percent of their constituency.
But rarely have we seen an entire primary field of candidates scrambling to renounce all their past identities and agendas — and to do so unapologetically, abruptly, and vehemently.
Apparently, they believe, at least in the primary, that the electorate will either identify as nonwhite, or far left, or both — and thus resent deeply any who are not.
To win the nomination, almost all the leading candidates on the Democratic debate stage now believe that they must renounce almost everything they once stood for — at least for a while. Given that most are white or affluent or children of privilege, or all three, sometimes the metamorphosis becomes low comedy.
In case you missed it, or are exclusively a reader of the New York Times, late last week Bernie Sanders tweeted this nugget: "Fossil fuel executives should be criminally prosecuted for the destruction they have knowingly caused."
No, that wasn't The Onion or The Babylon Bee. It was the real deal. The always-furious Vermont senator wants to incarcerate the very people who are responsible for keeping the lights on and the air conditioners running in the operating rooms of almost every hospital, not only in America but across the globe. And that's just the beginning of the myriad necessities of human life provided for at this point in human history by these supposed criminals in the eyes of the self-described democratic socialist of the multiple houses and private jets.
Crazy, no? Crazy, yes. Crazier than the proverbial hoot owl. And mighty angry.
Was Bernie always this way? More or less.
Most of us who have reached the age range that Joe Biden has have already watched our own parents age, decline, and suffer the indignities that invariably come with advancing age. We know we too will endure certain ailments or infirmities and hope we will be able to face them with courage and grace.
Now, for reasons no one outside the Democratic Party understands, Joe Biden is being put through the ringer as a presidential candidate, an undertaking for which he clearly is not prepared, mentally or physically.
Biden has always had problems with honesty and the truth. He plagiarized part of a speech by Neil Kinnock during his run for president in 1987–88. He lied often during the Obama/Biden campaign and about his academic career.
Google "Biden gaffes," and you will get a long list of outright lies and countless injudicious remarks, many of them quite racist. Those who never stop claiming they are not racists usually are exactly that.
The ongoing affair between the nation’s top law enforcement agency and the news media resulted in another hookup last week when CNN announced the hiring of Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI.
McCabe, a vocal Trump foe who opened a criminal investigation into the sitting president of the United States in May 2017 during his short stint as acting director, was fired by the FBI last year for lying to federal investigators.
He played a key role in concocting the Trump-Russia collusion hoax; wrote a book filled with animus toward the president; and remains under a grand jury investigation. Last week, McCabe’s lawyers met with federal prosecutors who are deciding whether to indict him for perjury.
So, of course, CNN hired him last week.
This month is the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first African slaves in Virginia. The New York Times has created what they refer to as The 1619 Project, whose goal “is to reframe American history, making it explicit how slavery is the foundation on which this country is built.
For generations, we have not been adequately taught this history. Our hope is to paint a fuller picture of the institution that shaped our nation.”
Americans know too little about their own history, including of course slavery. Slavery was a horror for those who experienced it — but there is no American alive today who either was a slave or slaveholder. The same cannot be said for parts of Africa and the Middle East, where pockets of slavery still exist.
The 1619 Project ought to be noble, but unfortunately political correctness has pushed itself ahead of good history — particularly economic history. What should have been a good discussion of the economics of slavery and its lingering effects has been turned into an anti-capitalist screed.
Today’s HFR is the story of an honorable man and his stolen dream.
David Koch was a brilliant engineer with a fleet of magnificent factories. He made great wealth and generously donated to causes such as the fine arts, cancer, especially prostate cancer, research, and the preservation of dinosaur skeletons.
He applied his engineering mind to social problems but learned some hard lessons. Political science is not a science at all.
Koch’s application of probability theory to technology made him the 11th richest man in the world.
However, his methods known as stochastic analysis, were coopted by the fake news media and are now used to gain and control power. Instead of controlling the production of commodities, the methods control the production of terrorists.
Stochastic terrorism means using search engine results, social media, and the fake news industry to excite individuals to commit terrorist acts. The idea moves most of the news these days.
Sadly, the man that introduced stochastic methods passed away today. David Koch’s vision was liberty for all. He put his money, where his passion was.
He failed to account for the evil people that will use any tool, any idea, to acquire power.
"Hi, I’m Elizabeth Warren. Even though I’m as white as library paste, I pretended to be an American Indian to get preferment. My research on medical bankruptcies was as fraudulent as the way I gamed the racial spoils system. So you should totally trust me when I say I’m “capitalist to my bones”!
The above quotation is from Armed & Dangerous...how each of the candidates would introduce themselves if they were honest.
There is an imaginary intro for each of them and they are all spot on, but because Warren is allegedly "surging," and because she is the panderer-in-chief, her gross dishonesty must be exposed.
Once upon a time in a universe far far away, the New York Times was known as "the newspaper of record." They purported to report "All the News That's Fit to Print."
That was never true — like all such outlets it was written by humans, ergo biased — but it was a tiny bit more accurate than today, even with notorious contributors like Stalin-apologist Walter Duranty and Castro-apologist Herbert Matthews. The late Abe Rosenthal at least made an effort.
Now the paper is little more than a left-wing propaganda sheet — and not a very good one, notwithstanding its seemingly unbreakable and unremitting influence on the mainstream media who still check the Times before they check themselves.
These days the paper almost feels run by idiots.
If Russian collusion has been the opiate of the Trump-hating masses for more than two years, the New York Times was one of its biggest suppliers.
Since late 2016, desperate to drown their sorrows over Donald Trump’s shocking win, political junkies on the Left and NeverTrump Right eased their inner pain with a daily collusion fix injected courtesy of the Gray Lady. With one click on the front page or opinion section, Times’ readers could satisfy their anti-Trump addiction while making them feel, if only for a few fleeting moments, powerful and in control.
Pain would give way to rage, then a false sense of hope. Surely the man installed by Vladimir Putin would never serve out his term, they would say to themselves while feeding their insatiable craving. And just as the high wore off, the Times would offer another hit, provoking hallucinations about Trump and his corrupt family being hauled out of the White House in handcuffs by Robert Mueller.
So, in a way, you can’t blame the Times for obsessively covering the fabricated Trump-Russia collusion storyline. It’s what successful drug dealers do—keep their customers hooked on a steady drip of dope and desperate for more.
A historic transition of the American political landscape is underway, as the older of our two parties is embracing antisemitism and moving away from support of Israel, driven by the personal ambition of a craven politician clinging to power.
Nancy Pelosi's desire to remain speaker of the House is why she is surrendering the Democrats' party to the Jew-haters, with the highly visible, openly antisemitic Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib becoming the real face of her party.
No fewer than seven of Pelosi's key political allies are facing primary challenges, just as did her close, long-serving ally Joe Crowley in 2018, birthing the political career of a comely former bartender, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. All of these senior Democrats realize that in low-turnout primaries, a highly motivated faction can deliver the nomination to a challenger.
One of the weirdest characteristics of our global politicians and moral censors is their preference to voice cosmic justice rather than to address less abstract sin within their own purview or authority.
These progressive virtue mongers see themselves as citizens of the world rather than of the United States and thus can impotently theorize about problems elsewhere when they cannot solve those in their own midst.
Big-city mayors are especially culpable when it comes to ignoring felonies in their midst, preferring to hector the misdemeanors of the universe. Notice how New York Mayor Bill De Blasio lords over the insidious deterioration of his city while he lectures on cosmic white supremacy. He’s one example of a great many.
