The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
WOODSTOCK, ME — Political commentator Tucker Carlson sparked controversy this week when he welcomed Bigfoot onto his show to discuss how mind-controlling chemtrails are sprayed over the flat earth by the Jews.
Viewers were shocked to learn that not only was Bigfoot real, but that the popular cryptid had been following conspiracy news for decades. Carlson nodded along with his guest, genuinely interested in what it had to say about Ben Shapiro.
Bigfoot, who spoke with a series of unintelligible growls and whistles, was adamant that the Jews were behind the chemtrails and that it was all part of an elaborate scheme to make people falsely believe that the earth is round. Bigfoot, a self-proclaimed expert on chemtrails, also added that the moon landing was faked (because the moon is, in actuality, made of cheese) and that jet fuel can't melt steel beams.
"So you're saying Israel — who I have no real problem with by the way, like at all — is directly responsible for everything that is wrong with society today, and that it can all be linked to chemtrails?" Carlson said, seemingly pushing back on his guest before immediately reversing course and agreeing with everything that was said. "That's a bold claim, and I have no reason to dispute it, of course, because it's obviously true."
The new episode of Carlson's show garnered tens of thousands of views within hours of going live. Several viewers commented on how strange it was to have the first-ever sit-down interview with Bigfoot in history and not try to learn more about his guest. "They spent all their time talking about Israel," commented @Abe333. "I wanted to hear more about Bigfoot."
Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro blasted the interview as divisive. "I have no problem with Tucker interviewing Bigfoot. But to sit there and listen to Bigfoot lecture us on chemtrails when he has no firsthand experience is just ludicrous," he said. "Bigfoot literally described planes as stone birds, and Tucker just nodded along. It's hard for me not to believe Tucker agrees with him, and that he has no idea what airplanes are either."
~ Babylon Bee reporting
In an age where complexity is often mistaken for sophistication, it is easy to forget a principle that has guided human understanding for thousands of years: truth is usually simple.
Thomas Sowell captured this perfectly when he observed that people who pride themselves on complexity often overlook the fact that reality itself is not complicated -- what becomes complicated is the debate about reality.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the current national conversation surrounding biological sex, gender identity, and the question before the Supreme Court this week regarding transgender participation in women’s sports.
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments on whether states may restrict biological males who identify as female from competing in women’s sports, the issue has been wrapped in layers of ideology, emotion, and political rhetoric. But when we strip away the noise and return to first principles -- biology, history, law, and common sense -- the truth becomes remarkably clear.
For twenty years, it is a TTP tradition to explain the meaning of Partridges in Pear Trees. Enjoy.
I hope you had the Merriest of Christmases yesterday, Wednesday December 25, but according to the song, the First Day of Christmas is the day after Christmas, December 26. That’s today.
Ancient Christians celebrated Christmas starting with the day after the birth of Jesus and ending on January 6th with the visit of the Magi in Matthew 2:11 known as the Epiphany.
Start with 12/26 and end with 1/6 and you get: the Twelve Days of Christmas.
No doubt you’re really tired of hearing Christmas songs by now, including this one, yet you may still be wondering what the heck partridges in a pear tree and eight maids a-milking have to do with the birth of the founder of Christianity.
So I thought it might be entertaining, as we recover from all the festivities, to take a look at the song’s origin, meaning, and myth.
First published in London in 1790, it was a "memory and forfeits" game played by children in the form of a song, where the leader recites a verse, each player in turn repeats it, the leader keeps adding verses until a player’s memory fails him/her and has to forfeit a piece of candy.
Even though The Twelve Days of Christmas was a kids’ song-game, it nonetheless had a deep religious meaning. Despite Santa Claus’ cultural appropriation, Christmas is above all a religious celebration. All of the song’s twelve gifts are Christian symbols.
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Stephen Miller on The Democrat Party:
“It is an America last party. It is a party that puts illegals over citizens, criminals over cops, cheaters over hardworking taxpayers at every level.”— America (@america) November 13, 2025
When hearing the truth for which they have no rational rebuttal, their response is violent rage, which makes them fascists. The Schumer Shutdown’s collapse ended late Wednesday night (11/12) with POTUS signing the funding bill passed by the Senate (60-40) and the House (222-209):
Michael Goodwin at the NY Post described the moment: Toxic Dems Schumer, Pelosi Get Shut Down – And Trump Stands Tall With One Of His Biggest DC Wins. An enjoyable read.
As will this HFR! A lot of cool and fun things to talk about – and you won’t believe one of them but it’s true. You’ll probably laugh your head off. Here we go…
The Iranian uprising is one of the three most moving expressions of human defiance so far this century. If the regime is toppled, it will constitute a fulcrum in the history of the world. Yet the hypocritical response from the liberal establishment has been as nauseating as it has been infuriating.
From Keir Starmer to Tucker Carlson, a startling number of our loudest “human rights” voices seem to be taking the words of the Persian mystic Rumi – “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there” – rather too literally.
Surely, if there was ever a moment not to go beyond “ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing”, now would be the time. Yet, armies of Western notables are either downplaying or simply ignoring this dramatic struggle for freedom.
These are the people that are passionate when their activism harms the West, but whose voices seem to desert them when the tyrant wears a turban.
[This Monday’s Archive was originally posted in TTP on December 29, 2009. It is a Nutshell History of an astounding son of a French clockmaker who played a critical role of support for both the American and French Revolutions, who learned that what made the former one of freedom and the latter a Reign of Terror was Christianity and its absence. A Christmas message for all of us.]
Notre Dame is on an island, the Île de la Cité, in the Seine River. If you cross over the Pont d'Arcole to Paris' Right Bank and walk for a short block, you will come to one of the city's most famous streets, the Rue de Rivoli. Walk along it to the left and you will reach the Louvre. Turn right, and it eventually becomes the Rue Saint-Antoine which ends at the Place de la Bastille.
There's just a traffic circle there now, with cars racing around a tall (154') column of green bronze topped by a golden statue of a winged Mercury. 220 years ago, there was a huge brooding fortress here, built in the 1370s during the Hundred Years War with England. Louis XIII (1601-1643) turned it into a state prison, which housed but seven prisoners and a handful of guards when it was stormed by a mob on July 14, 1789.
The French Revolution began with a chaotic frenzy of a crazed mob - and no one could see it, nor understand its absurdity, better than a man who lived in a resplendent mansion overlooking the Bastille. No one was better placed than he to grasp the difference between a revolution based on a Christian love for freedom and one based on anti-Christian hate and revenge.
No one - for as he gazed down upon the murderous mob storming the Bastille, he knew the critical role he had personally played in bringing about both the American and French Revolutions. How strange, he thought, that the uneducated son of a poor clockmaker would come to play a pivotal role in history - twice.
So curl up by the fire in a comfy chair with your favorite adult beverage, and let me tell you his incredible story - a story of revolution and the Barber of Seville.
[This week’s Archive was first published on September 1, 2005. Twenty years ago, it would have been deemed deranged to even imagine that New Yorkers would elect a Moslem Nazi as the mayor of the city where his religious predecessors committed the terrorist atrocity of 9-11. That he would also be a Marxist Communist would make it a Kafkaesque lunacy. Yet precisely this happened six days ago (11/04). The relevance of this analysis is now crucially clear as the foundation of understanding what just happened in New York City.]
TTP, September 1, 2005
I was recently asked what might be the common ground between the Radical Left and Radical Islam. Let’s expand on that and discuss with you the extraordinary extent to which Marx and Mohammed are ideological brothers.
In fact, they are much more than that. Marx and Mohammed are metaphysical brothers. They share the same view on the nature of reality. Their fundamental bond is a denial of the Law of Non-Contradiction.
Far more than a rule of logic, this is a basic statement of the way reality works. It was first put into words by Aristotle:
“It is impossible for the same attribute at once to belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same relation.” Metaphysics 1005b20.Contradictions exist only between thoughts, not in the world. This is also known as “common sense.” Both Marx and Mohammed disagree.
That reality is contradictory is the basic tenet of Dialectical Materialism – the philosophy of Marx, Engels, and Lenin – and of philosophical Islam, for which it is blasphemous to claim Allah is subject to the Law of Non-Contradiction as that would limit and bind him in the chains of logic.
If reality is contradictory and logic is an illusion, then you are left with only one way to resolve conflicts and disagreements: violently.
[This Live Long & Prosper column is dedicated to TTP’s Skye – Durk Pearson. I remember many a conversation with him on the epigenetic switches that turn our DNA genes on and off---- JW]
We’ve been told that our genetic destiny is written in our DNA. However, research is gradually dismantling this fatalistic view.
Genetics may influence approximately 25 percent to 30 percent of how we age. The remaining portion is influenced by factors entirely within our control: what we eat, how we move, how we handle stress, others, and ourselves.
Dr. Lucia Aronica, who teaches epigenetics and nutrition at the Stanford University Medical School, embodies this balance of nature and nurture.
After 17 years of epigenetic research, she sat down for an interview with me, highlighting that: “You are not just a passive reader of your genetic code, but an active writer of your health story every day with every choice.”
The prefix “epi” means “on top of,” referring to molecular switches that sit atop your genes, turning them on or off without altering the underlying code.
“Here’s the beautiful part: You can rewrite that software starting today,” Aronica said.
While woke squishes in America doubt whether America was ever great, there are clear signs of America’s greatness throughout Europe. There are several entire countries and many small towns still show gratitude to the Americans for liberating them during World War II to this day.
I had the privilege of meeting one of those liberators. Richard Brookins played Santa Claus for the citizens of the town of Wiltz, Luxembourg, after the U.S. Army’s 28th Division liberated the town from Nazi Germany’s occupation in 1944. Before the Nazis captured Wiltz, the residents always celebrated Saint Nicholas Day on December 6th. The Nazis, however, banned the celebration.
However, on December 6, 1944, the 28th Division, which was passing through, stopped the war for one day. That day, the troops celebrated by entertaining the people of Wiltz with their own Saint Nicholas Day. Brookins was recruited to play St. Nick, complete with his Bishop’s mitre and staff. Although the whole affair lasted only a couple of hours, it left a lasting impression.
The people of Wiltz continue to celebrate American Saint Nick Day and have placed a statue of Brookins dressed as Saint Nicolas in the center of town. Brookins, of course, isn’t the only one who is remembered with such love and respect. Many towns in Europe still honor and are grateful for the sacrifice and empathy that the United States demonstrated to them during World War II.
November 11th, a single square on the calendar, carries three names and three lessons for the modern West.
Veterans Day, honoring those who fought for our Republic.
Armistice Day, marking the end of the First World War, so cataclysmic its survivors called it simply The Great War.
And St. Martin’s Day (or Martinmas), an ancient Christian feast commemorating Martin of Tours — the Roman soldier who laid down his sword for Christ and spent the rest of his life fighting a greater battle for souls.
Three observances. One date. One truth: civilization survives because virtuous men step forward to bear its burdens.
Bamian, Afghanistan 1973. I spent some time in the Bamian Valley north of Kabul 50 years ago. What you see is the largest of the Bamian Buddhas carved into to sandstone cliffs in 600 AD by a Central Asian people who revered Buddha and called themselves Ebodai. It stands 180 feet tall. The Bamian Valley was a Buddhist pilgrimage site, with thousands of monks in monasteries and temples from roughly 100 AD until 800 AD, the time of the Moslem conquest of Afghanistan.
It was left untouched until the Moslem Emperor of India, Aurangzeb (son of Shah Jehan, builder of the Taj Mahal), blew off the statue’s legs with artillery in 1700. Then in 1890, the Moslem Afghan King of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan, ordered the Buddha’s face above the nose sliced off. The same Islamic practice of literal de-facing conducted upon ancient Egyptian statues including the Sphinx.
It was in 2001 that the Afghan Taliban blew up the entire statue you see here along with others as anti-Islamic “idols.” I consider myself immensely fortunate to witness this extraordinary work of historic art while it still existed.
(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #260 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
One of President Trump's achievements is his reshaping of the manner in which politics is conducted in D.C.
Once upon a time, shady deals were struck behind closed doors, but the communication was carefully curated. Irrespective of the nefarious intents and the catastrophic consequences, the sentences were beautifully constructed while the countenances appeared grave.
The Iraq War and ObamaCare were advocated by different parties, but the deceitful manner in which they were 'sold' was identical.
Politics was usually dreary, leading people to avoid the news. The powers in D.C. knew that if the presentation is dull, focusing on their nefarious actions is difficult, and this enables them to do as they please, without consequences.
Memoirs of leaders published decades after quitting politics reveal the meetings behind closed doors were frequently unruly and profane, and driven by petulance and pettiness.
However, they feigned 'normality' before the cameras. These acting abilities led to the quote that “politics is showbiz for ugly people.”
President Trump struck all that down with a sledgehammer.
One of the reasons for Trump's success in business is his skill as a negotiator and a strategic thinker.
So the focus of this piece is on the manner in which he effortlessly outmaneuvers his opponents, setting traps whose impact they comprehend only when they have stepped into them.
New Yorkers have handed America’s biggest and most famous city- the financial capital of the world- to a radical Muslim communist, who pals around with Jihadi terrorists, supports “global intifada,” wants to tax whites higher than minorities, and has never held a real job in his life.
New York City is now officially “Kabul on the Hudson.”
Or
“North Korea meets Sharia.”
Aren’t New Yorkers proud? What an achievement. All because the city that used to be known as “the greatest city on the planet” is now filled with a poisonous mixture of young jobless communists angry at living in their parents’ basement, and foreigners who hate the country they invaded, and want to turn us into the failed third world s***tholes they just escaped from.
So, I have an idea. “If you can’t beat them, give ‘em what they want.”
Here is how President Trump can win this battle for the soul of America. Stop fighting the communists and Muslim terrorist appeasers. Give them what they want….
President Trump should declare New York City is now a “ILLEGAL ALIEN FREE ZONE.”
Now many of you are probably thinking I’m planning a trap. Once gathered there, we can send ICE in and arrest them all. After they’ve all gathered in one place, it would be like rounding up and deporting fish in a barrel.
But no, that’s not my plan. Because…
You know the adage about the “800-pound gorilla” going wherever he wants to – such as five feet from you in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda. It is one of the world’s great thrills to be this close to these giants and feel at ease doing so. They are “habituated” to small groups of people whom they ignore. You of course are very quiet and do nothing to alarm them, just observing the little ones playing, mothers nursing, young ones climbing trees, huge male silverbacks watching over their families.
Gorillas are vegetarians, males eating up to 75 pounds of vegetation a day – thus they spend most of their waking hours chewing! The biggest silverbacks never get anywhere near 800 pounds by the way – 450 to 500 pounds at most (like the fellow in the photo). Big enough, believe me.
Rwanda is one of the best-run countries in all Africa. President Paul Kagame deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for healing his nation after the genocidal horrors of the 1990s. That’s far in the past now in this beautiful, peaceful land. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #93 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
