The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
This is the North Face of Mount Everest in Tibet. I took this picture on October 29, 1987, alongside a small group of friends. We had just finished crossing the entire Chang Tang Plateau of Northern Tibet. We stood silently, filled with awe and reverence for the privilege of being here.
An indescribably deep calm swept over us as we witnessed one of the most magnificent sights in all the world – the world’s highest mountain turn pink in the setting sun – and no one was calmer than Big John Perrott.
For we had been in the Chang Tang – once of the remotest places on our planet – on October 19 when we heard the BBC report on our shortwave radio that the US and global stock markets had collapsed.
It was Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow suffered the single largest one-day percentage drop in its history: 22.61%, losing 508 points from 2246 to 1738.
Big John collapsed emotionally. “I’m ruined! I’ve lost everything – all my life savings have been wiped out!” he exclaimed in anguish. There was nothing he could do. There was no way whatever we could communicate with the outside world. “If I could just have reached my broker in time to sell before the markets crash even lower, I’d at least have something left!” he lamented bitterly.
By the time we had reached Everest ten days later, our little shortwave radio told us that the markets were rebounding. Black Monday had been a trading event, not a fundamental or economic one. “Jack,” Big John told me, “I’ll always be grateful that I was in the middle of Tibet when this happened and couldn’t do anything. My panic would have been my downfall back home.”
Big John today is a TTPer well known on the Forum. Perhaps he’ll comment on the relief he was feeling as he was looking at that Everest sunset. TTPer Joel Wade was with me as well – perhaps he’ll reminisce on the Forum too.
There’s a clear lesson here to apply to the Dow this week. It’s been quite a week. Here we go…
“Democrats are going to have to make a decision at some point really soon, do they hate this president more than they love this country.”In other words, are Democrats going to choose to be Americans, or will they remain what they are now: Americans In Name Only or AINOs.
It’s the same exact issue facing the Democrat Propaganda Machine, ridiculously known as the “Mainstream” Media. There is nothing “mainstream” about this ilk who have abandoned the slightest pretense of honest journalism.
They no longer compose the “MSM” – they are now the WSM – the Waste Stream Media. What they produce is a sewer of filth, lies, and Hate America narratives.
Conservatives have contempt for RINO politicians, Republicans In Name Only, and for good reason. The basis for conservative contempt of RINOs is their cowardice – the spineless refusal of the GOP Establishment Elite to stand up for their professed principles.
There are a few of them so suffused with hatred for President Trump that they have become AINOs as well – such as Jeff Flake – but only a few.
Not so with the Dems and WSM. To call them simple cowards is too generous, for their hatred of America has become so visceral that to call it treasonous is no joke.
Let’s be very clear on this: You don’t get more treasonous than effecting the permanent destruction of American electoral democracy.
Panic makes people stupid – especially if they aren’t too smart to begin with.
The hysterical, hyperbolic, hypocritical and often hilarious efforts of Democrats and the WSM (Waste Stream Media) to prevent publication of the Nunes Memo backfired, bigly. Though old news to TTPers, this was the first time millions of Americans heard about FISAgate.
You’d think Dems/WSM would learn from experience. They haven’t. Now that the memo’s been published, Democrats say it isn’t true. Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has written a counter-memo.
BEEG mistake. There’s a mountain of evidence, still classified, that proves what Nunes said is true. By saying it isn’t, Democrats play into the hands of Republicans who want this evidence made public.
Last Friday’s HFR (2/02) outlined the batting order. Nunes leads off, followed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz bats cleanup.
I watch in slack-jawed admiration as a very stable genius and his allies choreograph release of evidence of the literally unbelievable corruption in his predecessor’s administration.
In the very early nineties, the Democrats were as obsessed with cocaine as they are now are with Russia. The cocaine in question was alleged to have been bought by Vice President Dan Quayle. The 1992 election was coming up. The decades of corruption, slime and lies by the Clintons were about to pay off.
The Quayle cocaine fabrication was forgotten once it was no longer needed. It’s hard now to understand how so many reporters and politicians could be sucked in by a ridiculous smear campaign. Why does an old discredited Dem smear matter? Because it shares a number of troubling similarities with the Trump Russia smear, including the same Clinton political operative who originated both.
Yes, it’s quite possible that Christopher Steele, Russian intel operatives and all the other elements of the vast campaign were never more than window dressing on a smear from the same guy who had peddled the Dan Quayle cocaine story to help the Clintons’ original presidential campaign. His name is Cody Shearer.
Not since the days of Belushi and Ackroyd has there been a Saturday Night Live sketch as funny as the one performed by Russian comics Vladimir "Vovan" Kuznetsov, 30, and Alexei "Lexus" Stolyarov, 28.
Okay, it wasn't on SNL and took place on a phone call with Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee (hold that thought), but it provided some of the best deadpan comedy in years.
Some might call it a prank, but I submit it is more than that, a revelation of sorts, demonstrating a true attempt at Russian, or was it Ukrainian, collusion by Schiff. (The comics were posing as Ukrainian officials.)
And who knew the ranking member could be the best straight man since Margaret Dumont? If you haven't heard it yet, don't wait. Here’s the video recording of the call:
“Elite” is now an overused smear. But it is a fair pejorative when denoting a cadre that is not a natural or truly meritocratic top echelon, but is instead a group distinguished merely by schooling, associations, residence, connections and open disdain.
If this is supposed to translate into some sort of received wisdom and acknowledged excellence, ordinary Americans may be pardoned for missing it.
Half the country no longer believes these self-appointed authorities, largely because there is no visible connection between what the self-congratulatory say and do and any commensurate discernable accomplishment.
One symptom of such a played-out elite is its blanket condemnation of the supposed blinkered middle-class—usually evident in their virtue-signaling outrage and in their inclination to contrast their own supposed enlightenment to the supposed ignorance of everyone else.
One of the stranger aspects of the Super Bowl LII broadcast on Sunday (2/04) was the Turkish Airlines sign on the NBC Sports desk during the pre-game show. Social media posts by fans were not particularly appreciative.
There is nothing wrong with a business or civic group advertising its message. But the uneasiness the ad caused many viewers was reasonable. Turkish Airlines is not a private business. The Turkish government owns a controlling 49.12 percent of the airline. And the Turkish government is not demonstrating affinity with America, let alone with American sports, these days.
To the contrary, although it’s a member of NATO, everywhere you look, Turkey is actively harming American interests. That’s because Turkey today is run by an Islamofascist Dictator who hates Christians, the West, and America. So why is he running multi-million dollar TV commercials in the country he dreams of destroying?
One reason is that Congresscritter Schifforbrains has never worked a day in his life in the real world – never had any private sector job, never had a business, ever in his life.
He went directly from law school to prosecutor for the US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, then California state senate in 96, then Congress in 2001 where he’s been there ever since. Oh yes, his Wikepedia entry says his net worth is $1.7million. Wonder how he did that.
The essence of drama is conflict and its resolution. This week is one of historic drama. As we await the resolution, let’s take a break from the tension to calm down and listen to the epic example of a crescendo in classical music, Ravel’s Bolero. André Rieu conducts the Johann Strauss Orchestra under a full moon at Maastricht, Netherlands.
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Didn’t that feel good? It was hard, I’ll bet, not to imagine Trump being the conductor instead of Rieu, wasn’t it?
Note that Rieu is holding a violin. That’s because he’s a famed violinist. Trump is too – a virtuoso at playing his enemies like a Stradivarius. This is the week he played them to climax, triggering them to collapse into full self-destructive dementia.
We’ll call it Trump’s Bolero.
Returning from his triumph at Davos where the world’s global elite treated him like a rock star (see last week’s HFR), on Tuesday (1/20) he delivered a State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress that ranks as one of the greatest ever given by any president. And as planned, it drove the Dems literally out of their minds.
If there is one place on more TTPers’ bucket lists than any other, it’s the birthplace of the two founding religious traditions of Western Civilization, Judaism and Christianity.
You could spend a lifetime in the Holy Land and not see it all, for under every rock there’s 4,000 years of extraordinary history. Yet millions of visitors come here and see so little.
They go to the famous places, take a lot of pictures, hear a lecture most of which they forget once they’re back home, and that’s about it. Israel, the Holy Land? Yeah, been there, done that.
So how about doing it for real? That means:
*Experiencing all those famous places to get an in-depth understanding of what actually happened there and why.
*Experiencing places you never heard of, yet are equally fascinating.
*Experiencing Israel on a personal level, making friendships that last a lifetime with people who live here.
*Gaining a revelatory grasp of modern Israel that’s deeper than has anyone you know.
*Having all of this sink into your bones so you never forget it as long as you live.
Isn’t that what’s on your bucket list? If so, consider joining me on an unparalleled experience of the Hidden Holy Land this coming April.
Every day now we hear Democrats talking about their “Blue Wave” that will put this Alzheimer’s sufferer back in the House Speakership:
Yet, as all surfers know, riding a big wave risks what they joyously call a “wipeout.” So let’s do a thought experiment.
It’s an observation so strikingly true that you wonder why you didn’t think of it earlier. “Donald Trump,” a friend told me the other day, “is teaching the Republican Party how to fight and how to win.”
The evidence is everywhere every day, and it was on vivid display at the SOTU last night (1/31). The president remains in a fighting mood, determined to keep punching his way forward.
The Trump way starts with the passage of the historic tax cuts despite tiny Republican majorities in Congress and scare tactics from the Left. Before passage, polls showed the public was strongly opposed — but Trump pulled, pushed and bullied his party over the finish line.
The roaring results, with millions of workers already getting bonuses, pension boosts and pay hikes, vindicate his determination.
The decision by the House intelligence panel to write and release its memo on possible FBI misdeeds is yet more evidence of a new fighting spirit. Even Speaker Paul Ryan, averse to conflict by temperament and training, forcefully supported the memo’s release, saying it was time to “cleanse” the FBI.
This is not George Bush’s or John Boehner’s Republican Party. This is Trump’s GOP, as he demonstrated in spades in his first State of the Union address.
It is difficult to imagine a more galling demonstration of incivility than the Democrats in the House Chamber for Trump's SOTU speech last night (1/30).
They scowled, frowned, and sat on their hands throughout the speech. They could hardly be bothered to acknowledge the heroes in the audience when they were introduced. While the Dems brought illegal immigrants, Trump invited actual paragons of American character and the families of victims of illegal immigrant crimes, as well as a victim of North Korea.
It was embarrassing, like watching the anti-Semites in the UN stomp out of the room when Benjamin Netanyahu speaks. How is it any different? Our Democrats behave exactly like the most racist, intolerant people on the planet, and in their own Capitol.
Besides blind hatred of Trump, Democrats have one issue and one issue only, the prioritization of illegal immigrants. The Democratic Party is today the party of illegal immigrants. That is their core constituency, that is who they represent over and above Americans.
It matters where the seats of power are located. Given the populist revolt in the United States and Europe against the so-called "global elite," it is time to refigure the geography of governmental and transnational power.
Take the United Nations.
Much of the international body's perceived negatives derive from being in the world's richest and most visible city, New York. But what if U.N. elites did not have easy access to instant television exposure, tony Manhattan digs, and who's-who networking?
Most of the world is non-Western. Many Western elites are apologetic over past sins of imperialism and colonialism. So why not move the United Nations to Haiti, Libya or Uganda?
Liberals treasure the United Nations. Conservatives don't trust its often anti-democratic and anti-American tenor. So why not split the difference by staying in the United Nations but, after 66 years of a New York headquarters, finally allowing another country a chance at hosting the U.N.?
Washington, D.C., is often considered out of touch, both politically and geographically, with the rest of America. Given Washington's huge number of federal workers, why not disperse at least some of its agencies westward to ensure demographic diversity?
