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L i k e U s ! ! !

THE NYT MISFIRES WHEN IT ATTACKS TRUMP’S USE OF THE DHS

The Trump administration has been using all available resources to track down and then imprison or deport the “worst of the worst” illegal aliens in America, the ones whose criminality extends beyond living illegally in this country.

However, for the New York Times, there’s a problem with Trump’s efforts to make America safer: He’s using DHS resources, which Congress intended to be used...to make America safer.

And if you think that’s nonsense, you’re right, but it’s the Times, not I, that’s nonsensical.

When Trump took office, he turned the DHS loose on illegal aliens who’ve engaged in murder, rape, drug dealing, sex trafficking, pedophilia, and other vile and violent crimes.

By mid-March 2025, ICE had already arrested staggering numbers of criminals:

“In the first 50 days of the Trump Administration, Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) has made 32,809 enforcement arrests. To put this figure into perspective, in the entire fiscal year 2024, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations made 33,242 of these at-large arrests.

As of Tuesday, ICE has officially made more at-large arrests in the first few weeks of President Trump’s presidency than the entire last year under the previous administration.

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THE WORLD’S MOST FREEDOM-LOVING PEOPLE

Laas Geel, 5,000 year-old rock art, Somaliland
Laas Geel, 5,000 year-old rock art, Somaliland

[This Monday’s Archive was first in TTP on March 7, 2013, shortly after the depressing spectacle of an Anti-American President’s 2nd Inauguration.  Thank Providence we now have a seriously Pro-American President today. On Friday (12/26): Israel Becomes First Country To Formally Recognize Somaliland As Independent State. Somalia is a completely failed state, the land of pirates, scam-artists, and Ilhan Omar. No country in the world deserves its sovereignty recognized more than Somaliland, yet every other UN country except now Israel insists it belongs to Somalia which is hasn’t since 1991.  Today (12/29), Bibi Netanyahu meets Trump – let’s hope that POTUS realizes: Recognizing Somaliland Would Be Trump’s Ultimate Response to Ilhan Omar.(Note: all photos ©Jack Wheeler)]

 

TTP, March 7, 2013

Hargeisa, Somaliland. Who are the most freedom-loving people in the world?  Certainly not Americans.

Someday, Americans may find the courage to no longer sell their birthright of freedom for a mess of government entitlement pottage, as Esau sold his birthright to Jacob (Genesis 25:29-34).  That’s someday, it sure isn’t now.  Right now, the people who love freedom more than any other are a group of Moslems in the Horn of Africa.

They are the people of Somaliland, who would rather be impoverished and free than sell their freedom for pottage.  Their story is a heroic saga, epically inspirational.  Let me tell it to you.

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‘JOBS AMERICANS WON’T DO’ – THE LIE THAT BROKE A NATION

Charlotte, N.C., is making headlines this week because dozens of construction sites have gone silent. ICE swept through the region, and the labor force evaporated almost instantly.

A major American city discovered, in real time, that its building boom was being held together by workers who couldn’t legally be there.

Watching that footage hit me hard, because I’ve seen it before — not on the evening news, but in the slow collapse of my own childhood community.

I grew up forty miles north of Louisville, Ky., in a one-stoplight town held together by tobacco, construction, and the kinds of gritty jobs that built the region’s character.

My dad ran a small construction contracting business and held a small tobacco base, which gives you the legal right to grow a certain weight of tobacco.

My brothers and I worked tobacco as teenagers, starting at 12 or 13, and my brothers did construction with Dad as soon as we were old enough to hold a hammer.

Then illegal labor arrived, and things began to shift.

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THE DEMOCRATS’ ”PARTY” MAY FINALLY BE OVER

In 2020, we figured out that Democrats were manipulating elections to win, whether through changing the way votes were cast and counted or through out-and-out fraud.

In early 2025, DOGE taught us that innumerable Democrat institutions functioned solely because of taxpayer money. And now, as 2025 draws to a close, we’re seeing that the Democrats have presided over corruption at a previously unimaginable scale in America. With each of these pillars exposed, and the financial ones being cut down, can the Democrat party survive much longer?

Let’s you and I count the ways it may not.

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THE TTP PERSON OF THE YEAR 2025

For America.

We’ve decided to mimic Time Magazine and use "Person of the Year" even if it's a whole bunch of people. Worry not, I won't be mimicking anything else from Time.

It is with great pleasure and honor that TTP announces that the agents of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are/is the Person of the Year for 2025. No one deserves it more than them.

Here's a reality check on what ICE does from something a friend of mine conveyed:

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REALITY CAUGHT UP TO ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’

fossil-fuel-plant

For decades, the monolithic and sacrosanct international climate change hierarchy went unquestioned.

Western nations in particular spent trillions of dollars over the past half-century to subsidize expensive but erratic wind and solar energy while demonizing carbon fuels as toxic threats to the planet.

Like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion dogma, climate change orthodoxy was embedded into every aspect of Western culture, from the corporate boardroom to the university campus.

Question whether man-made global warming was truly responsible for increased temperatures rather than natural, often centuries-long cycles of heating and cooling of the planet, and one was labeled a climate crank.

Everything from declining fertility to forest fires was ridiculously attributed to climate change.

But the causes of both demographic crises and charred landscapes were more likely the result of new affluent lifestyles that saw child-rearing as too expensive and time-consuming, and misguided forest policies or underfunded firefighting.

Yet reality has caught up with the near-religious climate change cult.

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DID UKRAINE REALLY TRY TO BLOW UP PUTIN’S PERSONAL RESIDENCE?

Putin’s Lake Valdai Home, one of his 8 palatial homes in Russia
Putin’s Lake Valdai Home, one of his 8 palatial homes in Russia

It was strange for an American President famous for denouncing “Fake News” to believe the claim of a Russian President famous for providing almost nothing but Fake News: Trump Says of Alleged Ukraine Attack on Putin: 'I Was Very Angry About It'.

Especially when: Russia Declines To Provide Proof Of Alleged Drone Attack On Putin's Home, Says Will 'Toughen' Negotiating Stance.

That’s because no evidence can be found that the attack overnight Sunday-Monday (12/29) ever took place beyond the Kremlin’s own claims.

Ukrainian officials led by President Volodymyr Zelensky have widely rubbished Russian reports that Putin’s secluded and heavily guarded residential complex near the Novgorod region village of Valdai was ever targeted. Moreover, they accused the Kremlin of inventing the attack as a pretext for Russia to back out of participation in ongoing peace discussions.

There is compelling and extensive evidence that Ukraine had conducted extensive and often successful drone strikes against targets elsewhere in Russia or in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory that night, but no  proof or even potentially credible evidence that Putin’s home had ever come under attack.

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CONTROL THE HEMISPHERE, CONTAIN CHINA

USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) conducts high-speed turns in the Atlantic Ocean
USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) conducts high-speed turns in the Atlantic Ocean

The USS Gerald R. Ford’s gray silhouette cutting across the Caribbean horizon marks a decisive shift in American statecraft:  U.S. foreign policy is focusing intensely on the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific.

From the Ford’s slow approach to Venezuelan waters to escalating trade tensions with Canada and early signs of a harder U.S. line toward Mexico and migration, Washington’s attention is once again concentrated on the regions most vital to its security and power.

This is no tactical coincidence. It reflects a deliberate recalibration under President Trump, binding hemispheric defense to the broader logic of great-power competition.

The United States is refortifying its neighborhood not as a retreat from global leadership, but as the bedrock from which it intends to sustain it.

The official story, of course, is that the Ford’s presence off Venezuela is part of an anti-drug, anti-cartel mission.

The larger calculus, however, is clear enough: it is about demonstrating and regaining U.S. maritime and aerial supremacy in its southern approaches, and about showing that no outside power — China, Russia or Iran — will be allowed to establish a permanent presence in the Americas.

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JACK’S FAMOUS EGGNOG

What’s New Year’s Eve without some great New Years’ Cheer? I’ve served this to great acclaim on many a New Year’s Eve, and am sure tonight will be no exception. So here we go! Happy 2026, TTPers – it’s going to be a great year for America and freedom in the world!

* 12 eggs

* 1 cup powdered sugar

* 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

* 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

* 1/2 tsp ground allspice

* 3 cups Famous Grouse or Jack Daniels (your choice)

* 1 cup dark rum

* 1/2 cup apricot brandy

* 1/2 cup peach brandy

* 4 cups heavy cream

* 1 cup whole milk

Carefully separate the eggs, placing the yolks in one large mixing bowl and the whites in another. Mix egg yolks with an electric mixer on medium to combine. Add powdered sugar and spices and continue to mix until blended. Stir in the FG or JD, rum, and brandies, followed by the milk and cream.

Taste – add whatever more ingredients adjusting to preferred taste or sugar for level of desired sweetness.

Wash off beaters, whip egg whites in their bowl until stiff. Refrigerate both bowls for at least 2 hours or so before serving.

______________________________

To serve: pour basic mixture into punch bowl, re-whip egg whites then fold into mixture, sprinkle each glass served with dash of nutmeg.

Refrigerate again after serving, will last up to a week with refrigeration. Enjoy!

And remember the wisdom of Mark Twain: “Too much of anything is bad, but too much whiskey is just enough.” Especially on New Year’s Eve…

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UNDERSTANDING TASERS

deuces_taserThe family of weapons currently manufactured by Axon Incorporated known as the TASERs have been around since the 1980s and have been evolving since then.

The term came from “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle” in the related book, published in 1911, which was a fanciful weapon foreshadowing the “blaster” of contemporary science fiction.

The first model was invented by a NASA engineer, with limited market.  In the 1990s the brand was revitalized, and eventually gave us the models we associate with the “TASER” name today.

Law enforcement was the original user of the TASER, but the many practical limitations on the nature of the devices prevented their widespread use for first responders.  The one those of us in law enforcement were really “waiting for” showed up around 2003 in the form of the Taser X26.

The system in that highly portable weapon produces an effect on the target person that we call “NMI” or “neuro-muscular incapacitation” in which the electrical currents going between the probes painfully lock up the muscles near the skin, stimulating both sensory and motor nerves at the same time.  This drops a person like the proverbial sack of potatoes—after the French Fry cutter.

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FLASHBACK FRIDAY – “THIS IS YOUR LIFE”

jw-life-at-17June 15, 1961. It was quite a shock to me when I was the surprise guest on Ralph Edwards’ famous television show. My “Life” at age 17? How could that be? The show’s producers were intrigued by a recent Life Magazine story of my swimming the Hellespont as did Leander in Greek mythology (December 12, 1960 issue) that also had photos of me on top of the Matterhorn and with a Jivaro headhunter.

Without my knowing, they flew my guide for the Hellespont swim, Huseyin Uluarslan, from Turkey to LA, the same for my guide on the Matterhorn, Alfons Franzen, from Switzerland, to be on the show. Most amazing of all, they got the Chief Prefect of Police for Ecuador, Jaime Duran, to pick up Tangamashi (the Jivaro who adopted me) and his brother Naita by helicopter from their Amazon encampment, then fly them from Quito to LA.

I was dumbfounded. So there we are in the photo, left to right: Ralph Edwards, Jaime Duran, Tangamashi, Naita, a very young yours truly, and Ralph Ferguson, son of medical researcher Dr. Wilburn Ferguson who translated for Tangamashi. Quite a moment for a 17 year-old boy – and no doubt for Tangamashi! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #10)

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A SIMPLE TOOL FOR MANAGING EMOTIONS

Getting overwhelmed or misled by our emotions can be a source of significant trouble. Emotions are not simple, but sometimes there are simple actions we can take to manage complex things.

Today let’s look at a simple way to avoid getting overwhelmed by your emotions.

  • When people were treated for phobias, practicing this simple skill lowered their fear by over 18%, and their psychological reactivity by over 27%. They also were less constricted generally, shifting from feeling a sense of threat to a sense of opportunity.
  • When feeling stress, using this technique led to people having 40% fewer alcoholic drinks when they went to a bar or party than those who did not use this technique.
  • When feeling angry with someone, those using this technique were 40% less verbally and physically aggressive than those who did not.
  • Rejection brings with it actual pain. When feeling rejected, those using this technique showed less activity in the parts of the brain connected to physical and emotional pain.
  • Using this simple tool can help us to deal with emotionally upsetting situations with a greater sense of calm and competence.
Okay, enough buildup, here’s the skill…

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DEAD VLEI, NAMIBIA

dead-vleiMany consider this the most surrealistic place on earth. The clarity of the air turns the sky deep cobalt blue, the dunes are so old they’ve rusted red, combining with the white clay floor to give the skeletal trees a scene out of a Dali painting or a science fiction movie. But it’s real.

A thousand years ago the river watering these trees dried up, leaving a white clay pan amidst red sand dunes almost as tall as the Empire State Building. It’s so dry here these acacia trees can’t decompose, their skeletons standing scorched in the sun for ten centuries.

Dead Vlei is in a region of enormous dunes called Sossusvlei. It’s a mind-boggling experience to float over Sossusvlei in a hot air balloon. Namibia, in fact, is full of such experiences – the largest fur seal colony anywhere at Cape Cross, the marvelous abundance of African wildlife at the Etosha Pan, the dramatic shipwrecks dotting the Skeleton Coast, traditional people living untouched by the modern world like the Himbas.

Plus it’s one of the safest and best-run countries in all Africa – certainly worth consideration for your bucket list. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #47 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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FLASHBACK FRIDAY: THE TURFAN OASIS

jw-at-emin-minaret-in-turfanThe Turfan Oasis in East Turkestan is far older than the Silk Road. Sitting in the Turfan Depression, second lowest on earth at over 500 feet below sea level) with a climate perfect for agriculture (like grapes for wine!), it was first settled by the Caucasian Tocharians some 4,000 years ago.

Over time it was absorbed into various empires ruling the Tarim Basin encircling the empty Takla Makan desert – proto-Mongols, the Tang Dynasty, the expanded Tibetan Empire at its height in the700s AD, Buddhist Uyghurs, and Genghiz’s Mongols. By the 1400s, the people of Turfan were mostly Buddhist or Nestorian Christian. By the end of the 15th century, they were ruled by the Moslem Moghuls who converted them to Islam.

Turfan was a key trading oasis on the Northern Silk Road which Marco Polo’s father and uncle, Niccolo and Maffeo traversed in 1266 to meet Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan. (Marco’s route with them in 1271 took the less-traveled Southern Silk Road underneath or south of the Takla Makan). I traversed both Silk Roads in 2008. Here I am at the Emin Minaret in Turfan. It’s a fabulous place to explore. Maybe some day again? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #239 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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HALF-FULL REPORT 01/16/26

trump-nobel-peace-prize-2025

Yesterday (1/15) in the White House, Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Corina Machado gifted her actual Nobel medal to our POTUS.

machado-respect

Note that Trump positioned the photo with her presentation below the painting of George Washington in the Oval Office. This was part of the genius move of Machado’s gift. She had recalled an article in Venezuela’s most widely read news site El Nacional dated November 4, 2024: El Medallón de Washington como Obsequio a Simón Bolívar - The Washington Medal as a Gift to Simon Bolivar.

“Simón Bolívar con el medallón de Washington”
“Simón Bolívar con el medallón de Washington”

Machado told Trump that in 1825, Marquis de Lafayette, the heroic French General who helped Washington win America’s Independence at Yorktown, gifted a medal portrait of George Washington from Washington’s family to the founder of Venezuela, Simon Bolivar, hailed as “the Washington of Latin America.” She then explained to him:

“Bolivar kept that medal for the rest of his life. And now, after 200 years of history, the people of Bolivar are giving back to the heir of Washington a medal, in this case the Nobel Peace Prize, as a recognition for your unique commitment to our freedom."

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