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HALF-FULL REPORT 01/30/09


The Age of Zero is only ten days old at this writing (1/30), and already this is a failed presidency.  On the eve of Zero's Immaculation, his approval rating was 83%.  Now Rasmussen reports it's 63%, a 20% drop in less than two weeks.

The goofball mistakes are piling up, but here's the top three, a Stupidity Hat Trick.

His first international interview is with a Moslem news outlet, earning him the label: "President al-Arabiya."  He grovels and apologizes to the Moslem world for America being the target of their hatred, as only a liberal embarrassed to be an American can.

In return, Mahmoud Ahmadinutjob spits in his face and demands that Zero beg for forgiveness for America's sins against Iran, the number one terrorist state on earth.

Zero follows up this demonstration of brilliance by attacking Rush Limbaugh by name, petulantly demanding that Republicans not listen to him.  Did Rush somehow bribe Zero to say this?  Now, everybody is listening to Rush - who immediately takes maximum advantage of his Zero-provided megaphone and offers an extremely clever proposal:

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THE FOUR GOVERNMENT-CAUSED REASONS FOR OUR ECONOMIC MESS


How much money would the government have to give you and every other American to avoid a recession? You cannot answer because the question contains a false conclusion, and when political arguments are about false conclusions, the wrong policies are pursued.

To try to reverse the current economic slowdown, one first must understand the real causes and then try to correct those causes. Many in Congress, the administration, and the Fed have misdiagnosed the problem and then given the wrong medicine -AKA "the stimulus package."

There are four government-caused reasons why Washington remains "stuck on stupid" regarding the economy.

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THE BOURNE ABSURDITY


I took my sons, Brandon and Jackson, to see the latest episode of Matt Damon's film franchise, The Bourne Ultimatum.  Like its predecessors, The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, it's great edge-of-the-seat entertainment and extremely well-directed, a first-rate example of action-genre film-making craft.

For anyone who knows anything about the CIA, it is also totally absurd.

You probably know the films' premise.  Damon plays Jason Bourne, a CIA assassin who has suffered amnesia due to a botched hit attempt.  His efforts to recover his identity and memories arouse the suspicion of CIA officials running illegal secret programs, who then send out a succession of assassins to eliminate him.

The term "CIA assassin," of course, will bring an instant guffaw of cynical laughter to those familiar with Langley.  Proof that such folks do not exist is that Hugo Chavez is not dead.

Movies love to portray CIA "assets" (as the Bourne films call them) as incredibly skilled and deadly, ruthless professional Terminators - whose mission is to hunt down either each other or innocent civilians, never actual bad guys and real enemies of the US.

Why can't Hollywood make a spy-action flick with at least a semblance of reality to it - say about a super-agent faced with world-class incompetence and collusion of CIA operatives in Pakistan, who end-runs them and goes for the villains within the Pakistani government who run both the Taliban terrorists and the heroin smuggling in Afghanistan?

That's what's really going on - the CIA led around with a Pak ring through its nose, rather than the movie image of hyper-efficiency and competence - and Hollywood is as clueless about it as Barack Hussein Obama Junior.

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THE NEED TO PERFORM TRIAGE ON COUNTRIES


What do Haiti and Afghanistan have in common, other than the presence of our military? They're both profoundly failed states that we pretend just need the right encouragement.

We told ourselves that in Somalia, too. And we soon may be telling ourselves whopping fibs about Yemen. Or Pakistan.

Failed, failing and outright fake states come in different flavors, from societies in which tribes remain more powerful than struggling governments to those that are gang-plagued and anarchic. There's no single solution to the problem. But we and other successful states typically stand in the way of any solutions.

We -- and the locals in failed or failing states -- would be far better off if competent powers engaged in a form of triage, categorizing them into:

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HALF-FULL REPORT 01/23/09


What could be more appropriate, on the eve of the TTP Carefree Rendezvous, than to hoist a pint of Four Peaks Ale brewed here in Arizona to an inspiring woman Republican governor who drives liberals out of their minds because she is a pro-family, pro-life, pro-Christian, anti-tax, anti-government spending, anti-illegal immigration Reagan conservative. 

Nope, we're not talking about Sarah Palin - however much the HFR is happy to hoist a glass in admiration of her at any time. 

We're talking about...

... Right next to the HFR Saloon is the Schadenfreude Bar, which serves goblets of frothy glee over liberals' misfortunes.  One patron was happy that Tim Geithner was going to be confirmed as Treasury Secretary.  "It will be wonderful to have a guy that cheats on his taxes be in charge of the IRS," he said.  "Now millions of us will say, ‘If he can, so can I'."

... Let's spice up the HFR this week, shall we?  With a spice that can be a solution to terrorism.  Oh, and a microbe that can be a solution to energy independence.

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TAXATION AS LEGALIZED ROBBERY


Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society," while his predecessor on the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Marshall, also correctly noted, "The power to tax is the power to destroy."

The American Founding Fathers, in the Declaration of Independence, state as one of their grievances against King George III, that he imposed "taxes on us without our consent."

"No taxation without representation" was a rallying cry of the Revolution, and from that time it has been widely agreed that imposition of a tax without the consent of the governed is a form of tax tyranny.

President Calvin Coolidge stated it succinctly, "Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery."  (Ronald Reagan admired Coolidge so much he had Coolidge's portrait hung in the Cabinet Room of the White House.)

So at what point does taxation move from that necessary for proper government to tyranny?

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SUMATRA SUNRISE


It's a funny thing about epiphanies - you never know when or where you'll have one.  This particular one of mine came appropriately enough in a church - but this was a church in a village called Tuk Tuk on an island in a lake in Sumatra.

It was the joyous singing of the congregation that triggered it, a congregation composed of families, of men and women and children of all ages joined together.  The contrast between this seemingly ordinary Sunday service in a small Christian church with that of a mosque -men only, chanting like joyless robots, their children not with them, nor their wives whom they force to hide behind veils and burqas, was overwhelming.

For these courageous churchgoers live on a Christian island surrounded by a Moslem sea.  Sumatra is part of Indonesia, a country with the world's largest Moslem population.  My heart went out to these people happily singing and celebrating their faith.  Tears began streaming down my face and they would not stop.

They were tears of gratitude and hope - for I believe these people will not succumb to Islamization but triumph over it.  Here in Sumatra there is a Christian sunrise. 

I am going to encourage you to come here, to Lake Toba, and experience this yourself.  After all, in what other magical paradise on the planet can you get a good meal for a dollar and a hotel room for $25?  A spacious room with a balcony that has this view:

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HOW OBAMA IS ENCOURAGING ISLAMIC JIHAD


The rising cases of home-grown Islamist Radicalism in the US and the several terror plots that were discovered in 2009 in the US are alarming.

The five Moslem students who went to Pakistan to wage Jihad against their own country, the Fort Hood Massacre, and the latest Christmas airline terror attempt are just a few examples of many. 

In trying to understand this trend in the first year of the current Administration, one should question whether some actions of President Obama are perceived in a way that is encouraging the Jihadists to intensify their attacks on the US.

Firstly, from a cultural perspective, the Arab world resonates with appearances of strength and weakness.  Some of the actions of President Obama that could have been perceived as weakness by the Jihadists include:

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HALF-FULL REPORT 01/16/09


The HFR starts off this week by celebrating the first nomination of the year for the coveted Darwin Awards.

As you may know, these awards are given to individuals of such inspiring idiocy they have contributed to the benefit of mankind by removing themselves from the gene pool.

So it is that a Darwin Award is hereby bestowed upon the eight Somali pirates who a few days ago capsized their speedboat escaping with $3 million in ransom cash.  Five of them drowned, three swam to shore, all the money was lost at sea save for $153,000 found on the body of one of the five who washed up on a beach.

Now if all the Somali pirates could be removed from gene pool.  There is a quick and easy way to do this.  In the middle of the Indian Ocean not far from the Somali coast is an island called Diego Garcia.  It belongs to the Brits, and leased by them to the US as a military base.  We have B52s there.

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REAGAN VS. CLINTON BY THE NUMBERS


Under which recent president do you think the U.S. economy performed best?

The policies of Presidents Bush, father and son, and Jimmy Carter clearly did not work as well as Ronald Reagan's and Bill Clinton's.

So let's compare their economic performance.  For the numbers show that Democrats can continue "the-Clinton-economy-was-best" ploy only if the Republicans and the news media let them get away with the factual misrepresentation.

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BORNEO SUNSET


This is a tale of tattooed headhunters and white rajahs, of fantastically rich sultans and weirdly demented princes, of spectacular natural wonders and their destruction, of Chinese Christians, Malay Moslems, and Javanese imperialists, of impossibly beautiful sunsets in the South China Sea.

This is a tale of Borneo.  It is also a tale of Christians under siege.

borneo_map

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GOOGLE AND THE CHICOM BANDITS


Google may have the backbone Congress lacks: The Internet giant is standing up to the Chicom bandits in Beijing.

Why would a for-profit company threaten to pull out of what the investment gurus (who brought you the housing bubble) insist is the greatest market in the universe?

There are three reasons, though only two have been recognized:

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HALF-FULL REPORT 01/09/09


The barkeep here at the HFR Saloon can't keep up with the drink orders this week.  Half of them are drinks to celebrate the never-ending pratfalls of the Zero Circus.  The other half are for glasses of beer to cry in, since the Circus' biggest pratfalls will be the ruination of America's economy and national security.

Every celebrant, it seems, wants a different cocktail.  One fellow has a Sidecar.  "Do a lot of business in Albuquerque," he says.  "Every business guy in town knows what a corrupt crook their governor Bill Richardson is - he's the Blagojevich of New Mexico.  You telling me Zero's people didn't know this, that the FBI has a major investigation on him?  I'm telling you, Zero is not ready for prime time.  By the way, always make a sidecar with bourbon, not brandy."

Nearby was someone with a Manhattan.  "I'm from Chicago and we know Blago.  He's much smarter than Richardson who's dumb as a stump.  Look how Blago snookered that arrogant little worm who pretends he runs the Senate.  Blago knew if he nominated a white guy it would be blocked, so he picked a black guy whose only qualification was that he was black, old Tombstone Burris.  Harry Reid had to cave.  Sure proves we're post-racial after November 4, huh?"  He took a sip.  "Be sure and have your Manhattans with rye, not Canadian, whiskey."   

At the end of the bar was a grandfatherly type who was into his second Long Island Ice Tea and feeling no pain.  "Doncha just love Slick Willie's chief of staff running the CIA?  If that isn't a hoot, what is?  Until we get nailed by another 9/11, that is.  That Feinstein broad got her panties in a twist because Zero didn't pick her boy Kappes."

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WANT A REAL FREE LUNCH FROM THE GOVERNMENT?


Have you ever had a "free lunch?" A "free lunch" means the benefit you receive has no direct or indirect costs and is not a payment for a past act or a future obligation.

When Hillary, in her Christmas video, showed all of the "gifts" she was going to give us (e.g., "national health insurance," "kiddy care," etc.), she was promising to saddle us with future tax obligations, which are only "gifts" in Washington political-speak - and certainly not a free lunch for the nation.

The administration, members of Congress, and the presidential candidates are in the process of coming out with their "economic stimulus" plans to help avoid a recession or to mitigate the pain if one occurs.

Rather than take this opportunity to offer a real "free lunch" by removing government obstacles to a proper functioning economy, some will propose more spending and regulation because they are more interested in power than doing what is best for the citizenry.  Wouldn't you prefer to get a real free lunch from the government?

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