The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Gobsmacked.
Ever hear that term? It’s the British equivalent of our being flabbergasted. This has been a week of being gobsmacked. Note that the term has two sides.
As Theresa met Trump at the White House late this morning, she declared, “America and Britain can lead the world together again,” while Trump made it clear that Britain was the US’s “premier ally.” They will work together on accelerating Brexit, the UK’s exit from the stifling EU, and a US-UK free trade deal. Tomorrow, however, is another story…
More gobsmacking. It’s actually overwhelming how much of it there has been in the seven days since The Donald became President Trump. So let’s start with what gobsmacked me the most personally at the very moment he took the oath of office.
All in all. this has been a Yuge week for Trump and America. Let’s enjoy it…
It is astounding how much misinformation and lack of knowledge there is regarding Syria today. This is ground zero for the war on ISIS and Jihadist Fascism, yet very few know what’s really going on. You are soon to be among them.
Let’s start with a quick story. In the pre-dawn hours of August 24 last year, 2016, a heavily armed force of the Turkish military dubbed Euphrates Shield invaded Syria and seized the border town of Jarabulus on the Euphrates River (see map). The excuse was to rescue the city from ISIS.
What actually happened was that a series of anti-ISIS Arab Military Councils had formed their own militias in the region composed of local fighters. They had succeeded in liberating the town of Manbij from ISIS south of Jarabulus a few weeks before, and were now poised to take Jarabulus as well.
But just as they were about to enter the city, the Turkish Army arrived. Within hours, the Arab militia fighters born and raised in Jarabulus saw ISIS terrorists shave their beards, change their black garments for Turkish uniforms, and join the Turks.
In other words, the Islamist and ISIS-supporting leader of Turkey, Recip Erdogan, ordered his army into Syria not to attack ISIS as his propaganda proclaimed, but to prevent the anti-ISIS militias from defeating ISIS in Jarabulus.
"Democrats lost because they did not know how to talk about race," Aimee Allison told the DNC candidates forum on race.
Aimee Allison is a professional “race talker.” She’s a senior VP at PowerPAC+ which is dedicated to tapping into the “political power of the multiracial majority.”
On Monday (01/23), PowerPAC’s Democracy in Color hosted the DNC Chair Candidates Forum 2017. The qualifications to be the leader of the Democrat National Committee were obvious. It was their job to pander to the “new majority” of non-whites.
White voters make up 71% of the electorate. Hillary won little more than a third of this “old majority.”
“I’m a white woman, I don’t get it,” candidate Sally Boynton Brown shrilled. Her job, she declared, was to “shut other white people down” until they admit their “privilege.” Note the black lady behind her smiling and nodding when she says it:
Has anyone actually worked out yet what that Women’s March over the weekend (01/21) was all about?
According to Madonna it had something to do with blowing up the White House.
According to Michael Moore (not a woman) it was about stopping Betsy De Vos (a woman: how does this work, exactly?) from becoming Secretary of Education.
According to Hamas-supporting, hijab-wearing co-organizer Linda Sarsour, it had something to do with that famous supporter of women’s rights, Islam.
According to Hermione Granger it was a lovely excuse to fly over from England with her Mum, to feel humble and try on some new bright red lipstick.
According to at least one of the girls in the photo above, it’s about “good scince”. Yay! Go, good scince!
There is now no denying that China's economy is slowing sharply, though this can be masked by mini-booms along the way.
China is creating credit at twice the pace of underlying growth and is relying on hazardous bubbles to keep growth running far above the safe speed limit, Fitch Ratings has warned.
Short-term stimulus is papering over deep cracks in the economy and vital reforms are being neglected, storing up serious trouble for the future.
The Fitch credit agency said state control over the banking system will prevent a sudden collapse in confidence or a western-style financial crash, but the Communist authorities are running out of tools to meet their inflated GDP targets.
China's epic catch-up boom since the early 1980s will likely sputter out this year as banks struggle with the legacy of bad debts and chronic malinvestment. Here’s why.
Most new cars sold in 2024 will have self-driving capabilities so that the number of auto fatalities will be falling rapidly.
That is an easy prediction, because the technologies have already been developed and roll-outs of the new cars are being planned and, in some cases, are underway.
There will be many seen and unseen new technologies in the next eight years, so by the end of the Trump administration (assuming he is re-elected), the world will look very different. Unfortunately, economic advances take place more slowly, and political advances even more slowly — without much advancement in 2,000 years.
Removing counterproductive regulations and taxes and reducing wasteful government spending should lead to higher growth and, hence, more and better jobs. However, new technologies have been rapidly eliminating manufacturing jobs everywhere — even in China.
If not in manufacturing, where will all the new jobs be? The truth is no one knows, but they are likely to appear as they always have in the past.
Finally the day has come. Deliverance Day, the end of the Nightmare of Zero. A new dawn for America with more freedom, more prosperity, and more moral normalcy of traditional values.
It is a day to celebrate with joy and exuberance. Yet it is far deeper than that. You may be like me, experiencing emotions hard to describe or contain.
Watching Trump speak at the Lincoln Memorial last night, seeing him and his family in front of the giant statue of Lincoln as a chorus of Marines sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic while fireworks exploded over the Reflecting Pool of the Mall – frankly, it made me cry and shiver with goosebumps.
What is happening before our eyes is a true historical moment. The throngs of people massed at the Inauguration Eve celebration last night knew it. They were hugely happy – calling out “We love you!” to Trump – and at the same time there was a solemnity to their happiness.
What they were feeling was far more than what revelers at, say, Times Square feel celebrating the Ball Drop on New Years Eve. They knew they were witnessing and participating in the rebirth, indeed possibly the salvation, of their country. They were experiencing an overwhelming sense of awesomeness that was palpable among them It certainly was what I felt.
As this day unfolds, it may be as hard for you to contain these feelings as it is for me. Savor the moment of this extraordinary day, January 20, 2017. It is a day you will never forget.
America’s Nobody-in-Chief is finally going away, his last spasm of rhetorical onanism completely overshadowed by Donald Trump neatly turning the tables on the media purveyors of that pathetically fake “dossier.”
No one is listening to him. No one cares. While the helpless mainstream media frets over its irrelevance, Obama is left urging his minions to throw little tantrums out in the Deep State, trying to do just a little more damage to this country before he is finally exiled to comfortable obscurity. But payback is a Pelosi.
Soon Trump’s pen and phone are going to be wielded. All that last-minute regulatory nonsense is getting overturned. America will be a beacon of freedom to Cubans once again. The Western land thefts will be undone. We’ll drill, baby, drill. It’s going to be awesome, as will the tsunami of liberal tears.
And there’s nothing you haters can do about it. Nothing. Here’s why…
It was Harvard professor Samuel Huntington who first hurled the epithet “Davos Man” at the new elites, railing against “gold-collar workers” with no use for the nation state, and divorced from organic societies rooted in tradition.
He warned of a cosmopolitan superclass of 20 million people, with interests diverging ever further from the anthropology of the parish. This rootless supra-culture was cornering the gains of the global economy, and capturing ideological power.
“They have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations,” he wrote.
Prof. Huntington has earned his posthumous vindication. The pull of the nation and ancestral memory is stronger after all. Everything that the World Economic Forum stands for on the eve of the 47th summit in Davos is palpably under threat.
The Washington Post is reporting (1/17) that “over 40 Democrats in Congress are boycotting Trump’s Inauguration.” This is a modest proposal regarding what to do about them.
The first time I met Democrat Maxine Waters was nearly a generation ago when she was a Member of the California State Assembly.
At the State Capitol in Sacramento with the Republican Minority Leader of the State Assembly, I entered a “Members Only” elevator just as Assemblywoman Waters was about to close the door. She gave the Republican Leader a dirty look, then glanced at the customary “no smoking sign” and blew smoke in my face.
A Member of the U.S. Congress since since1990, Maxine Waters remains perennially angry. If Al Sharpton were a transsexual, he would be Maxine Waters, except she may be more demagogic, if that is possible.
A quintessential political hack, she sees everything in terms of race, gender, class, in that order. Extra points if you’re a Palestinian or Muslim.
She has presided over a political machine; her daughter has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars to sell her mother’s name. Given the family’s moral clarity, it is hardly surprising to find Waters (“I wouldn’t waste my time”) as one of at least 42 Members of Congress, more than one in five Democrats, boycotting the swearing-in of Donald J. Trump as our 45th president.
Hammers, broken windows and fights. That’s what a safe space for free speech looks like at UC Davis.
Safe spaces are places where everyone who isn’t a safe space fascist feels unsafe. The more safe spaces a campus has, the less freedom of speech the students and faculty dare to enjoy.
UC Davis has a great many safe spaces.
The University of California institution has safe spaces for illegal aliens (the Undocumented Student Center) and for asexuals (the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual Resource Center) which hosted a “Tampon Tea Party.”
It has segregated safe space housing in Campbell Hall for black students and the Women's Resources and Research Center will provide safe spaces and “Mind Spa Services” for anyone offended by Christian views on abortion.
But all the safe spaces were about making life unsafe for everyone who wasn’t a left-wing fascist.
Last night (01/18), 40 hours before Donald Trump’s swearing-in as president of the United States, Taiwan’s “Representative” in the U.S. (i.e., de facto Ambassador) laid out what Taiwan wants from the relationship – and it does not include being offered up as a “bargaining chip” in the United States’ relationship with China.
Speaking at a dinner celebrating 80 years of diplomacy at Twin Oaks, the Washington, D.C. estate owned by Taiwan’s government, Representative Stanley Kao praised the current state of U.S.-Taiwan relations.
The relationship has “never been better in recent memory,” he said, even if engagement is “quiet and low-key” at times. Taiwan hopes to continue that momentum under the new Trump administration – with a caveat. The relationship “should be based on its merit and not used … as some kind of bargaining chip,” Kao said, to applause from the audience.
Kao’s comment touches on a concern that Trump may view Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of China, as a bargaining chip in the larger U.S.-China relationship.
The rains have returned to California, and the six-year drought appears to be largely over.
We have heard countless assertions from journalists and politicians, ignorant of the weather history of California and the other western states, that the drought was a result of global warming.
In the January edition of Scientific American, there is a well-told story, “California Megaflood: Lessons from a Forgotten Catastrophe” by B. Lynn Ingram, a professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkley. She notes:
“Geologic evidence shows that truly massive floods, caused by rainfall alone, have occurred in California every 100 to 200 years. The only megaflood to strike the American West in recent history occurred during the winter of 1861-62. California bore the brunt of the damage.
This disaster turned enormous regions of the state into inland seas for months, and took thousands of human lives. The costs were devastating: One quarter of California’s economy was destroyed, forcing the state into bankruptcy.”
The floods, by the way, followed “two exceptionally dry decades.”
People are endlessly surprised by some unusual weather, geological, political or economic event, often with the erroneous assumption that such a thing has never happened before. This lack of historical knowledge is not confined to the poorly educated, but often experts in some field or another do not know the history of their own discipline.
