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A TEXAS FLOOD

Texas is a benchmark for the rugged, frontier aspects of Americana.

Founded as an independent republic in 1836 and incorporated as a U.S. state in 1845, it has its own historical character—a part of the U.S., but at the same time one that entered the U.S. under unique terms and by its choice following prior independence, a product of a unique cultural progression.

Few of the first migrants to the region characterized Texas as “beautiful.”

There is beauty if you look for it, certainly, but the same qualities can make Texas inhospitable and dangerous.

Until the railroads appeared and began to shrink the frontier into a more accessible box, and the Texas Rangers and repeating firearms drove off the Comanches, it was thought of by most as a dangerous wilderness.

Our first Anglo arrivals encountered the thicket of East Texas; a suffocating, lush green barrier that is good for farming, if you can clear it out.

Old photos show us that many of the trees, having grown over eons, created an environment like triple canopy jungle.

Likewise, the coastal plains further south tend to be flat and unremarkable, with low trees; good for farming and cattle, but pretty unremarkable as far as scenery.

Going westward from this region, you find the Hill Country.

It was in the early hours of July 4, 2025 that historically heavy rains in the Texas Hill Country generated a flood event that would claim the lives of 27 campers there—many of whom were young girls.

Over a hundred other people in other riverside camps, tents, and RV parks in the same region would also die after being swept away in the night.

But what is most important about this story is not the description of how tragic the events were—which no one argues with—but what is happening in the aftermath, and what this says about the modern state of Texas.

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FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE CRUSADER FORTRESS IN THE CAUCASUS

This is the fortress town of Shatili in an extremely remote Caucasus region in Georgia called Khevsureti. It was built by the Crusaders 1,000 years ago. The Khevsur people who live here trace their ancestry back to these Crusaders and until the 1930s still wore chain mail in feud-battles with other towns. I took this picture in 1991.

American traveler Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) saw and recorded the customs of the Khevsurs in 1935. The Khevsur men, dressed in chain mail and armed with broadswords, wore garments full of decoration made up of crosses and icons. They don’t do that anymore, but they proudly retain their Crusader Christian heritage – for Georgia adopted Christianity in the 4th century AD. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #85 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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PLITVICE

lakes-of-plitvice The Lakes of Plitvice (plit-vit-see) in central Croatia south of Zagreb are a World Heritage Site, a wonderland of sixteen crystal clear turquoise lakes interconnected by dozens of waterfalls over travertine limestone natural dams built up over thousands of years. There are wooden walkways along them all, over which you can spend the most relaxing day strolling by them.

Croatia is a country filled with history, charm, and beauty, but here is where that beauty is unsurpassed. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #271 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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THE UNKNOWN RIVIERA

In the Mediterranean, experienced travelers know the French Riviera from St. Tropez to Menton, and the Italian Riviera from Ventimiglia to Cinque Terre. There is one Riviera in the Med they may not know – Albania’s. The Med has many beautiful coastlines, and just about all of them have been “discovered” by jet-setters to backpackers. Not yet, however, for Albania from Saranda in the south across from Greece’s Corfu to Vlora across from the tip of Italy’s Boot Heel.

Here you find an abundance of gorgeous coves and pocket beaches tucked away with hardly a soul there. The one pictured above isn’t even named on a map – there’s just a tiny wharf for local fishermen. Yes, the Albanian Riviera is getting discovered, with boutique hotels and nightclubs sprouting up here and there. But as for now, it’s still the Unknown Riviera, gorgeous with so much untouched. You might want to experience it before it’s overrun. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #82 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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FISHING AT DAWN IN HA LONG BAY

ha-long-bay Ha Long Bay near Haiphong, Vietman – meaning Descending Dragon – is a World Heritage Site as one of our planet’s great scenic wonders, with thousands of limestone karst rock pinnacles, towers, and islets. The most beautiful time is dawn, peaceful and serene, with small fishing boats of local villagers out for the morning catch. A few days aboard a comfortable junk cruising Ha Long will do wonders for you. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #160 ©photo Jack Wheeler)

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THE ETOSHA PAN

etosha-pan-elephantsNo, this isn’t the Serengeti.  The Etosha Pan is a huge 2,000 square mile salt pan in northern Namibia that has an amazing abundance of African wildlife that flourishes in a desert – lots of elephants as you see, giant eland, huge oryx, kudu with the males sporting their glorious spiral horns, wildebeest, zebra, all kinds of antelope, plus lions and leopards galore hunting them.

They all thrive on the available river and springs water amidst the surrounding mopane balsam woodlands.  It’s one of Africa’s least known yet most astounding wildlife spectacles. Come during the dry winter months of July-September when the animals gather around the waterholes.  You’ll never forget it.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #291, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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HALF-FULL REPORT 03/20/26

So much for the Dems’ scam of “MAGA breaking apart.”  On Wednesday (3/18), NBC News released its poll that CNN’s data guru Harry Enten got blown away by (FYI, Don Shula’s ’72 Dolphins is still the only perfect season team in NFL history). It put paid to all the MAGA Civil War fake news.

The frosting on the polling cake came yesterday (3/19) when one of the least biased pollsters, J.L. Partners, released this: Republicans Overwhelmingly Back Trump Over Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly On Iran War, Poll Finds.  Not just MAGA but all Republicans across the board who are totally sick and tired of the “I hate Jooos Trio of Antisemitism” – Tucker, Candace Owens, and Megyn Kelly, who can’t stand it that America and Israel have teamed up to wipe Tehran Islamic Terrorism.

While Megyn has recently jumped into this gutter, Candace has been bat guano demented for a long time – as Tucker digs himself ever deeper into the abyss.  Read one of the world’s great conservative intellectuals, Douglas Murray, eviscerate Tucker’s eulogizing the execrable British Nazi Oswald Mosley (whose guest of honor at his 1936 marriage in Berlin was Adolf Hitler) in today’s NY Post: Deranged Tucker Carlson Backstabs Trump.

 

So here’s the gloriously hilarious part of this saga.  We’ll start here, details to follow:

Note: Jump on in because you’ll find something that will startle and stun you…

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EXPERIENCING THE RECONQUISTA

This painting, “The Capitulation at Granada” by Francisco Pradilla Ortiz in 1882, depicts one of the most epic events in the world history of Christianity.

On January 2, 1492, the last ruler left of what was Moslem Spain, Boabdil of Granada, surrendered to King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile.  In attendance was Christopher Columbus, courting the Spanish monarchs for sponsorship to sail west to find the riches of the East.

This moment was the completion of nearly 800 years of Christian knights waging war to expel the Islamic invaders of their land.  That land, Hispania, Spain, had been Christian for centuries – from the 200s AD on as a Roman province by the Christians of Rome, then by the Christian Visigothic Kingdom.  But in 711, Moslem armies crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to invade and conquer all of Visigothic Christian Spain.

Except for a remote region of snow-capped mountains in Spain’s far northwest, where Visigothic knights led by a nobleman named Pelagius had fled. There, in 718, in a cave called Covadonga, they had a vision of the Virgin Mary, who told them they must fight and expel the invaders of Islam and recapture Hispania for Christ.

Pelagius declared war against the invaders, attracting Christian knights hiding elsewhere. In 722, the Moslem armies attacked, only to be soundly defeated by Pelagius’ forces in the Battle of Covadonga.  The Reconquista, the epic Reconquest of Christian Spain from the invaders of Islam, had begun.

From 722 to 1492, 770 years, it took three dozen generations of Christian warriors to wage and complete the Reconquista.  This is unquestionably the greatest triumph and commitment of a Christian people fighting for their faith against an alien enemy out to destroy them.

This October, we are going to trace and experience it from start to finish, from Covadonga to Granada. “We” meaning Rebel (who’s fluent in Spanish) and me leading a special group of TTPers who want to personally experience this epically heroic Christian history.

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AIKIDO AND THE GLOWARMER FLEA

[This Monday’s Archive was first in TTP on May 9, 2007.  Today (3/16), Fox News has this headline: Historic Blizzard Paralyzes The Midwest, Bringing Biggest Snowfall In Over A Century.  So it seems appropriate to make fun of the glowarmer clowns and their pseudo-science and provide some real science instead once again.]

 TTP, May 9, 2007

We’re going for a wild ride here, starting on a log floating down a river, then go on a fling through the galaxy. On the way, we’ll examine the extinction of the dinosaurs. We’ll end up applying aikido to astrophysics as a way to de-subsidize the glowarmers.

Glowarmers – those who believe in the religion of Man-Made (“Anthropogenic”) Global warming – argue that:

  1. The earth’s climate is getting dangerously warmer due to “greenhouse gases” that hold heat in the atmosphere so it can’t escape into frigid space…
  2. The greenhouse gas primarily responsible for this “greenhouse effect” causing global warming is carbon dioxide…
  3. Human energy production and consumption (e.g., coal-fired power plants, internal combustion engines) is the primary emitter of the additional carbon dioxide causing the global warming…
  4. Thus the solution to global warming is the drastic reduction of human carbon dioxide emissions.
This argument is so willfully ignorant of basic science that it cannot be attributed to stupidity.  Indeed, a great many glowarmers are highly intelligent.  It must be attributed to an ego-trip of absolutely monumental magnitude, of genuinely pathological proportions.

So lunatic enormous that the glowarmers’ egos are like the ultimate joke example of egomania, the flea with a

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THE REDNECK AUTODIDACT: WHY SELF-TAUGHT MINDS ARE THE FUTURE

[TTP:  In an era when the Left has deconstructed so much of education, the Space Age and the Homestead Movement are both burgeoning. Is this paradox – or cause and effect?]

In the fall of 1980, a yellow school bus from Trimble County Middle School rattled down a gravel road somewhere in the sticks of northern Kentucky and let us off at what felt like the edge of the world.

About twenty-five of us–mostly twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, all restless energy and muddy sneakers – piled out into the crisp October air. Our teacher, who knew the Hubbards personally, had promised us something different from the usual field trip. This wasn’t a museum or a factory. This was a living lesson.

We hiked down a steep, leaf-strewn path through the trees, the Ohio River glinting below us through the branches. At the bottom, the trail opened onto a narrow rope bridge swaying gently over a creek. We crossed one by one, gripping the ropes, half-laughing, half-terrified the whole thing would give way.

On the other side stood Harlan and Anna Hubbard’s place: a low, hand-built house high above the riverbank, surrounded by chickens scratching in the dirt, goats wandering freely, and ducks waddling toward us the moment Anna appeared with a bucket of feed.

She let us help scatter the grain, smiling quietly as hands shot out to grab fistfuls. Then we filed inside. The house was small, spare, and impossibly clean – every surface polished or whitewashed, every corner thoughtful. Sunlight poured through the windows and landed on a baby grand piano that dominated the living room like it belonged to a concert hall, not a river shack.

Harlan’s paintings hung on the walls: soft river scenes, barges at dusk, the water and sky bleeding into each other in colors so calm they almost hurt to look at. Across the wide Ohio, on the Indiana shore, the skeletal frame of the unfinished Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant loomed, contrasting with the Hubbard’s off-grid lifestyle.

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BRILLIANT MOVE BY THE IRANIAN PEOPLE AGAINST THEIR OPPRESSORS

[TTP:  This article is from Friday, and quite short, but the news is so delightful that it may just make your entire week!  I know it did ours.]

We've seen Israel and the United States take out a lot of Iran's leaders.

The two countries have also been pounding away at their military capacity.

They've decimated their Navy, and they've taken over their skies.

"Never before has a modern, capable military, which Iran used to have, been so quickly destroyed and made combat ineffective," Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared.

So on one level, they've already largely succeeded in taking down the military.

But how do you help the people along in rising up and overthrowing their oppressors?

There's a new report that shows the Iranian people may have figured out a brilliant answer to that question, with the help of Israel.

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THE IDEOLOGICAL CONTAMINATION OF THE ARSENAL

Anthropic AI, until very recently, occupied a privileged position within the technological architecture of the United States national security apparatus.

The company, founded by former artificial intelligence researchers and lavishly financed by Silicon Valley capital, developed an advanced family of large language models known as Claude.

These systems were designed to ingest vast oceans of data, synthesize intelligence, assist engineers, support cyber operations, and accelerate the decision making processes that increasingly define modern warfare.

Because of these capabilities, Claude became the only frontier artificial intelligence (AI) system authorized for use within certain classified Pentagon environments.

It was used for intelligence analysis, research inside national laboratories, cybersecurity tasks, and complex logistical modeling.

Yet by early March 2026 the very same technology once welcomed into the digital bloodstream of the American military was abruptly expelled.

The Department of War formally designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” ordering contractors and agencies to begin phasing the system out of defense related work.

The reason was neither espionage nor foreign ownership nor a catastrophic data breach. The problem, according to senior Pentagon officials, was ideological contamination embedded within the software itself.

When officials speak of “polluting” the supply chain in this context, they are not referring to environmental damage or corrupted hardware. The word describes something far more insidious. A military supply chain must be doctrinally neutral.

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WHY THE COVER UP OF CHINESE INTERFERENCE IN OUR ELECTIONS?

John Solomon is reporting on previously suppressed information indicating that, as early as 2020, we knew the Chinese were trying to interfere in our elections, and that this intelligence was covered up.

The burning question is, of course, why that happened.

Solomon’s report is based on a 7April 2020 National Intelligence Council Assessment. That report reads in part:

“We assess that China and Russia are increasing their ability to analyze and manipulate large quantities of personal information in ways that will allow them to more effectively target and influence, or coerce, individuals and groups in the United States and allied countries. Their cyber espionage efforts have helped them acquire bulk data.”

“Adversaries almost certainly are already applying data-analysis techniques to hone their efforts against US targets.’

“Chinese intelligence officials analyzed multiple US states (redacted) election voter registration data…”

This is particularly troubling because the date of this report dovetails with the cover-up of the actions of the Chinese-affiliated election service company Konnech.

In 2022, the election security nonprofit True the Vote broke the story that a company called Konnech in Michigan was storing data on American election workers on servers in China.

True the Vote leaders Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were, of course, ridiculed by the so-called mainstream press.

Then

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KEVIN CLINESMITH – EVEN DIRTIER THAN WE THOUGHT

In all the tens of millions of words that have been written by the mainstream media about the Trump-Russia collusion story, in all the hundreds of names that have appeared within those often-breathless filings, one name almost never appears: Kevin Clinesmith.

No, Clinesmith doesn’t appear in any of the four books — FearRagePeril, and War — written by the so-called Dean of Investigative Journalism, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward.

Nor does Clinesmith appear in The Divider, the ostensibly serious 725-page book about the entirety of Donald Trump’s first term by former New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker and his wife, New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser.

I have a theory as to why this might be: because the mainstream media can’t account for what Clinesmith did.

Clinesmith, a well-placed Trump-hating FBI lawyer, pleaded guilty in 2020 to having falsified evidence on an application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

What, exactly, did Clinesmith do? He doctored an email saying that Page had been a CIA source to indicate just the opposite — that Page had not been a CIA source.

That warrant was ultimately approved by a FISA court judge, and it allowed the Obama administration to spy not just on Carter Page but on candidate Donald Trump and his entire team during the 2016 campaign.

And its three successive renewals allowed the FBI to continue spying on Trump during his presidency.

So when you ponder the term “abuse of power,” don’t think about Watergate and Richard Nixon. Instead, think about Crossfire Hurricane and Barack Obama.

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