The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
“RINOcare.” Aka Ryancare/Obamacare 2.0. This entire debacle is ridiculous. My question asked of many on Capitol Hill is: Why is Trump being rolled on this?
The consensus answer is that McConnell and Ryan have conned him into believing that a full repeal cannot get past a Dem filibuster, that only a partial repeal can under “Senate rules” requiring it to qualify as a “reconciliation” bill needing only a simple majority.
Got that? The key word in that sentence is “conned,” because it’s all nonsense. A simple majority vote is all it takes to eliminate the filibuster. There is nothing in the Constitution nor any law requiring 6o votes to pass a bill instead of 51 – it’s a tradition, nothing more.
Which is why Chuck U. Schumer is the Perverse Hero of the Week right now. (For the real HOTW, see below at the end – but no fair peeking, dessert comes after the main course…)
Welcome to another enlightening, alarming, and in the end, joyful HFR….
The front page headlines around the world of this morning’s (3/23) news are all the same – about the “driver,” the “assailant,” the “lone wolf,” the “knife-man,” the “knife-wielding attacker,” who murderously drove his car across Westminster Bridge killing and injuring dozens of pedestrians, and stabbed a policeman to death trying to enter Parliament in London.
There is story after story about the victims and the policeman, who are named with photos and their life stories. There is one story that is missing. Search in vain through the newspapers and websites of the British and US press, for you will not find one about the perpetrator – not who he is, not his life story, not even his name.
Scotland Yard is, at this writing, refusing to identify him. They only describe him as “Asian” – which is PC code in Europe for “Moslem,” and his attack as “an act of international terrorism.”
British Prime Minister Theresa May denounced the attack as “sick and depraved” – never even hinting at who or what is responsible for such sickness and depravity.
So who and what is? The answer may surprise you. For as much as you and I and every reader of British tabloids know that the “Asian knife-man” is a Moslem motivated by Islamofascist barbarism, that’s not who and what.
To learn who and what is responsible for that Moslem terrorist’s sickness and depravity, all Theresa May and every native-born Brit have to do is look in the mirror.
Last week (3/17), we discussed “The Suicidal Racism of Western Civilization.” Now we turn to the West’s – including America’s – suicidal masochism.
This is about What We Know and.. What We Don't Want To Know.
Let’s start by looking at what Wikileaks revealed about the CIA in their recent “Vault 7” document dump, which you can find here.
I am taking these leaks as real. Whether you like Julian Assange and his team or not, they have a stellar record of presenting the truth.
The ruling gangs in DC and allied media look very, very bad in comparison. I believe Wikileaks far more than I do politicians and news-readers, and I think that's the only rational choice.
Also, please bear in mind that new batches of CIA leaks may appear at any time. According to Assange, the recent batch was less than 1% of what they have. Perhaps the remaining documents will be very mundane, but I rather doubt it.
With that said, there are five big revelations I think you should see:
The US shale industry has become a hydra-headed monster for Russia – and OPEC too. Before they have contained one threat, fresh dangers keeps popping up in new and expanding zones.
This war of attrition in the crude markets is lasting far longer and biting deeper than the energy exporting states ever imagined. It profoundly alters the geo-strategic contours of energy, and the global balance of power.
New technology is reviving old US fields already written off as largely exhausted, and in the latest twist the impetus is spreading to 'super-basins' in Latin America that threaten to replicate the US success story in short order.
"The tiger is out of the cage and it is going to be very hard to put it back in again," says Gerald Kepes, upstream chief for IHS Markit. "There are multiple basins that could really take off." Yes, out of the cage and eating the Russian bear alive.
Last week, the Dutch elections of March 15 were billed around Europe and beyond as a battle royal between the forces of populist evil, as represented by Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party (PVV), and virtually everybody else in the motley crew of Dutch electoral politics.
The victory of prime minister’s Mark Rutte’s VVD party (which lost 20% of its seats) over Wilders’s PVV (which added 25%), was greeted rapturously as a monumental defeat for populism and a great triumph for Europe across the political spectrum. In fact, it was nothing of the kind.
If its coverage showed anything, it was that the European press, much like the American mainstream press, has become a one-trick pony that is good at demonstrating political bias, but rather useless in helping one understand where Europe is going.
For these elections did have some profound implications for the future not only of the Netherlands, but all of Europe, that were nearly completely missed in the tons of ink spilled on partisan post-mortems.
Most profoundly: an openly Islamist party made it into a European parliament on its very first try. This is a paradigm change documenting the growth of political Islam in Europe.
Do you think the federal government spends too much? Taxes too much? And should reduce the deficit?
Most Americans agree except when it comes to specific spending programs they like. The people “hire” members of Congress to make these difficult choices.
President Trump released his “short budget” this past week, which is a general statement of his priorities and changes he wishes to make in the “discretionary” portion of the budget.
Predictably, the special interests immediately sent out their press releases and videos explaining that if the program they are wedded to is cut or eliminated, it will mean the end of civilization as we know it, and worse.
The question now is: Will Republicans in Congress side with their President, or with the corrupt special interests?
Welcome to the St. Patrick’s Day HFR!
We start our celebration with a depiction of Ireland’s Coat of Arms, on which is Ireland’s national symbol, Boru’s Harp, named for Ireland’s national hero Brian Boru (941-1016), which resides at Trinity College in Dublin and is on the label of every bottle of Guinness.
Take some time today to read about Brian Boru in TTP’s nutshell history of Ireland, Beyond the Pale (August 2006). It will give you a special appreciation of the heroism of the Irish people.
And take a moment to enjoy Ronald Reagan’s Favorite Irish Joke in the TTP Humor File today.
Oh, yes, many TTPers with Irish ancestry or wish they had have asked me if I would take them on a exploration of the coolest places in Ireland. How about sometime this summer? Let me know – jack@tothepointnews.com.
OK – time for a pint of Guinness as we delve into the week. Here we go…
I lived in Hawaii once for three years. Growing up in Southern California, I had never experienced racism before. Thus it was shock to me to be hated for the color of my skin. Really hated for being a haole (how-lee).
That was in 1971. Barack Obama was ten years old attending Punahou School in Honolulu, where he was born and raised. Other than the 2½ years he spent in Indonesia, he lived his formative years (until he was 18 and left for college) within and a part of the Hawaiian culture of haole-hatred.
As did Derrick Kahala Watson – born in Honolulu, went to Kamehameha School for ethnic Hawaiians, graduated from Harvard Law School in the same class (1991) as his friend Barack Obama. In 2012 he made local headlines: Native Hawaiian Selection Made for Federal Judge.
On Monday (3/14), Obama – who appointed his law school friend to that federal judgeship – was in Honolulu. On Wednesday (3/15), that friend, Derrick Kahala, issued the most outrageously lawless, unconstitutional ruling in the history of the federal judiciary. Did Obama ask Kahala to do this? Ask the NSA guys who tape their calls.
In any regard, Kahala seized his opportunity to act on the haole-hatred he grew up with by targeting America’s Chief Haole with his ruling. For as you’ve by now guessed, haole means someone with white skin.
Which brings us to Iowa Congressman Steve King and his now-infamous tweet (see above) on Saturday (3/11) that “prompted outrage” by libtards everywhere.
The revelation making the rounds again about Obama, how he sneaked through $221 million to his Palestinian terrorist friends during the last hours of his presidency, makes it elaborately clear that he was always in it for himself and for his pals.
For eight years Israel was betrayed and America was duped by a charmer.
There are movies about such men -- Tony Curtis in “The Great Impostor,” or Matt Damon in “The Talented Mr. Ripley” -- about men skilled in the art of deception. Through guile, a ready smile, a quick tongue, they charm their way up the ladder from one bamboozled household to the next.
Their papers are never in order, but they manage. They manage to reach the top. Both Curtis (whose film was based on a true story) and Damon did not know a thing about medicine or airplanes but they managed to run hospitals and to fake it as pilots. They got caught. But before that they had everybody fooled.
Sound familiar? Surely not to Progressives who wanted to be fooled or didn’t really care. So long as Obama was their choice he could do no wrong.
But to the rest of America, and the world, the damage bitterly lives on.
On three separate occasions since 2013, the US Federal Reserve sent shock waves through the global financial system when it tried to tighten monetary policy, and each time it was forced into partial retreat to halt the mayhem.
Over recent months the Federal Open Market Committee has been careful to take the global pulse before acting. It now hopes the coast is clear. Yesterday's (3/15) quarter point rise in the federal funds rate to 1% has been so loudly signaled in advance that investors have already adjusted.
Emerging markets seem better prepared, so far able to shrug it off. China has restored confidence in its exchange rate regime. Capital flight appears to be under control. Europe's shift towards bond tapering reduces the risk of a rocketing dollar. "We're not overly worried about downside shocks," said Janet Yellen, the Fed chairman.
Yet nobody really knows whether the world can handle a total of six rate rises over the course of 2017 and 2018 as sketched in the Fed's 'dot plots' scenario.
The recent (3/03) attack on a BBC television crew in Hunan province, China, reveals once again the Communist Party of China’s brazen thuggery and out-of-control bullying.
To physically attack a major foreign media crew, smashing their equipment, and then to force them to sign a confession is the most public example of what has been apparent for several years: Xi Jinping’s regime behaves more like gangsters than government.
Yet just as the assault on the BBC helps highlight China’s aggressively repressive behavior toward anyone, Chinese or foreigner, deemed to dissent or threaten the regime’s interests, it is only the tip of the iceberg.
If government-backed thugs can behave that way toward the international media, imagine how much worse it is for Chinese people?
Since he became president, Xi has presided over a dramatic deterioration in human rights over the past four years:
Are you shocked that the Russians might have had an interest in who won the U.S. presidential election?
Nations have always had an interest in who rules the nations they deal with — both opponents and friends — and that they often try to influence the outcomes should come as no surprise.
Mr. Putin had a clear-cut Russian national interest in discouraging oil and gas fracking in the United States and elsewhere. The Russian economy and budget are highly dependent on foreign oil and gas sales — and high oil prices. Increases in the world supply of oil and gas depress the prices of these commodities.
So it is completely rational for the Russians to do whatever they can to discourage production by others, including the U.S. If you follow the money they spent to do this, where do you think it leads to?
This just might be the most fun HFR ever. There’s also a part that could be the scariest. Might as well enjoy ourselves first.
Let’s start with the prediction in the Inaugural Day HFR of January 20: “Melania looked unbelievably stunning. She will now rapidly become the most glamorous and idolized woman on earth.”
This week we could see this becoming true, only far more so. Yesterday, Fox News reported: “Melania Trump’s Approval Ratings on the Rise.” They would be far larger except for the deranged Trump-hatred of Moonbat Democrats.
The poll was taken a week ago. On Wednesday (3/08), the First Lady hosted a White House luncheon in celebration of International Women’s Day. A quote of hers at the event has quickly gone viral across the planet:
“As an immigrant myself, having grown up in a communist society, I know all too well the value and importance of freedom and equal opportunity. Ideas upon which this great nation was founded and has continued to strive towards throughout its history.”
Her beauty and elegance are breathtaking. Yet that is only on the surface. There is something far deeper. Look at this picture of her taken at the luncheon. Look into her eyes.
Her eyes reveal the beauty of her soul. Her eyes proclaim a serene joyousness in being alive, in being human, in being a woman, in being who she is. There are no doubts or fears or qualms in those eyes. There is no anger – there is only love and happiness.
In those eyes you can see why First Lady Melania Trump will become genuinely beloved by the American people and by people all over the world.
Will her husband? That may seem impossible now, given that Democrats and their Fake News minions really are as wacko as depicted above. Yet that too began to change this week.
Here we go with the most fun, the most illuminating, and certainly the longest HFR ever.
