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Rational Conservatives
Saturday, February 14, 2026
“Is the Pope Catholic?”
All our lives it’s been the standard rhetorical response to any question that obviously should be answered yes. Who ever dreamed it would one day be a real question? That day came yesterday (9/24) with Francis’ ghastly speech to Congress (the link is to the full transcript).
Isn’t he supposed to be the Vicar of Christ? Isn’t the whole point of his church to be about salvation via Jesus? Yet he delivered a boring trite clichéd libtard political diatribe that didn’t mention either “Jesus” or “Christ” once – do a word search in the link and you’ll see.
He’s a “liberation theology” Marxist Poseur Pope with the narcissistic effrontery to lecture us on freedom and opportunity. He didn’t even have the courage to denounce abortion to the Dem proponents of evil incarnate Planned Parenthood sitting right in front of him…
Of course, the big news – reallllllly big! as Ed Sullivan would say – today is Boehner’s resignation. Let’s not pop any champagne corks just yet, but at the very least this calls for a finger or two of Famous Grouse. Here’s what a Congressista I talked to had to say…
Anyone see dots connecting these stories?
Army Times, Saturday 9/19: President Nominates First Openly Gay Army Secretary.
New York Times, Sunday 9/20: US Soldiers Told to Ignore Abuse of Boys in Afghanistan.
London Daily Mail, Wednesday, 9/23: Army Rejects Appeal of Green Beret Kicked Out for Stopping Afghan for Raping 12 Year-Old Boy….
In the Not All Chinese Are Smart Department this week, and in honor of Chief Chicom Xi Jinping’s visit to the White House today, we bring you the story of Chinese Vice Admiral Yuan Yubai, commander of the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) North Sea Fleet…
And what presidential candidate told this joke at the Value Voters Summit in DC this afternoon? “President Xi of China is at the White House today. The world press’ attention is focused on this historic meeting between the world’s most powerful Communist… and the leader of China.”
Here’s the video of his speech – it’s fabulous.
Tonight (9/24), China’s Chief Chicom – Xi Jinping (shee-jhun-ping), General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of the People’s Republic of China – will have a private “working dinner” at the White House with President Zero.
Tomorrow (9/24) comes all the pomp – 21-gun salute on the South Lawn, Rose Garden joint Zero-Xi press conference, lunch at State with Lurch and SloJo, reception at Capitol Hill, formal State Dinner at the White House with Zero and Xi toasting each other in eternal friendship. That’s all public ceremony. The important meeting is dinner tonight.
It will be child’s play for Xi to play Zero like a Stradivarius and smoke him like a Gurkha Black Dragon. Xi is a vastly more intelligent, knowledgeable, ruthless, and competent leader than our pathetic know-nothing narcissist. But what if he were up against an American president his equal in both brainpower and willpower? A president as determined to defend his country as Xi is his?
Not a President Trump, whom Xi would simply stroke his ego until Trump was purring on his lap. No, someone truly smart and savvy.
What would the conversation be tonight if Xi were having that working dinner with a President Ted Cruz? It would go something like this.
What happens in politics when one side is absolutely committed to its principles, willing to fight for them no matter the cost, and the other side reflexively surrenders on every issue? We have modern-day Washington.
Today, President Barack Obama fights relentlessly for his liberal priorities. Like the Terminator, he never gives up, he never stops. And Republican leadership responds to every challenge by surrendering at the outset.
The core of this capitulation comes from Republican leadership’s promise that “There will be no government shutdown.” On its face, the promise sounds reasonable. Except in practice it means that Republicans never stand for anything.
Like Charlie Brown and the football, this disconnect explains the massive frustration with Washington. The American people do not believe Republicans will actually do what we say we will do.
The alternative? We actually do what we said we would do. We fight for commonsense conservative principles, and we use the constitutional authority of the power of the purse—which leadership has forsworn—to do so. Here’s how.
Volkswagen has suffered a shocking loss of credibility after conspiring to violate US pollution laws and dupe customers on a systemic scale.
The scandal has once again exposed a culture of corrupt practices at the top of German export industry.
It is of an entirely different character from earlier breaches of US law by Hyundai and Ford, which stemmed mostly from errors. The US Justice Department is weighing serious criminal charges.
“It is profoundly serious. The accusation is that VW deliberately set out to mislead regulators with a cleverly hidden piece of software,” said Max Warburton from AllianceBernstein.
The financial daily Handelsblatt called the deception a “catastrophe for the whole of German industry.” It is and here’s why.
Tallinn, Estonia. Right now, Estonia is arguably the most advanced country in the world when it comes to use of the Internet and related technologies.
Estonia is a most improbable success, in that a mere quarter of a century ago it was still under domination of the Soviet Union as a very poor backwater on the Baltic Sea. Now it is a developed country and a member of both the EU and NATO.
Estonia has been the most successful of the former communist-controlled countries, in part because of excellent political leadership since independence, including the remarkable Mart Laar -- the father of the economic reform, who served as prime minister from 1992-1994, and again from 1999-2002.
The Estonians now have the rule of law, the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the EU, a balanced budget, free trade, and a flat-rate income tax -- all of which have led to their high economic growth and prosperity. Here’s how they did it – and why theirs is a country of the future.
When someone calls me for coaching, once we’ve established the goals they want to accomplish, one of the first questions I ask is, "Why is it important for you to reach these goals?"
If the reason is something like "My parents want me to…" or "My boss wants me to…" or "I’m supposed to…" I know we have some more talking to do, because somebody else wanting us to do something is rarely a strong enough motivation to make changes in our lives.
Changing behavior, learning new skills and overcoming personal limitations all take consciousness, time and willpower. Habits are powerful forces; we can change them but not lightly. Frankly, we have to have a darned good reason to change.
Here’s the secret to change and how to access it.
When Poland was able to free itself from Soviet imperialism in 1990, the Poles proceeded to systematically tear down the giant statues of Lenin (never life-size as Lenin was 5-foot-3) infesting every town in the country.
One of the largest stood in the Plac Centralny, the central square of Nowa Huta, an industrial town near the historic city of Krakow in the south. The huge bronze statue was pulled down in a pre-independence protest in 1989. The square was renamed Plac Ronalda Reagana.
Recently, however, the artistic community of Nowa Huta decided the city needed another statue of Lenin, to appropriately honor the father of Soviet Russian tyranny.
The statue’s creators, led by artist Bartosz Szydlowski, painted it in radioactive yellow-green, and entitled it “The Fountain of the Future.” It’s a fountain, you see, depicting Lenin relieving himself.
After discussing Carly’s triumph and all the Hillary-inspired hit pieces on her, plus a variety of takeaways from Wednesday’s debate, we come to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
As the moderate leader of the Labor Party (the Brits’ Democrats) from 1994-2007, he’s aghast that his party would elect as its leader a 100% Marxist Moonbat on the side of every Moslem terrorist group there is, Jeremy Corbyn. This happened last Saturday (9/12).
Yet Blair sees something far larger than just Brit party politics. He sees what’s in common with political manias over Jeremy Corbyn, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Alexis Tsipras in Greece, Marine Le Pen in France and elsewhere. He calls it the Politics of Parallel Reality, “in which reason is an irritation, evidence a distraction, emotional impact is king and the only thing that counts is feeling good about it all.”
We discuss illegal immigration, worse in Europe than even in the US – and how TTP’s long-expressed fears of the real reason behind our flood of illegals became clear yesterday.
There’s hopeful news: Breitbart is reporting (9/14) that the odds are growing for Boehner’s removal as Speaker. Puzzling news about Scott Walker – and great news about The PIAPS: her support among Democrat women has collapsed – down 29% in the last 8 weeks, 71% in July to 42% now.
There’s lots here in the HFR this week, including unusually inspiring Heroes of the Week. Let’s get started.
Summer Days Summer Nights Are Gone is a funky Bob Dylan rocker from his Love and Theft album of 2001. He’s performed it all over the world – the link is a video of his doing so in Tel Aviv in June 2011.
A very appropriate location – which we’ll discuss after we talk about this verse of the song and the Pub debate last night (9/16):
Well the fog's so thick you can't spy the land
Well the fog's so thick that you can't even spy the land
What good are you anyway if you can't stand up to some old businessman
Weddin' bells are ringin' and the choir is beginning to sing
Yes, the weddin' bells are ringin' and the choir's beginning to sing
What looks good in the day, at night is another thing
Yes, what we saw last night was summer days coming to an end for The Donald. Here’s how it happened. Then we’ll see how summer days are gone for Israel as well. As they should be.
The consensus is clear: Carly Fiorina won both the first and now second Republican Primary debates. As a result she is climbing in the polls and into the top tier of candidates. Her rise has led pundits to speculate about her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
I was a member of the HP Board of Directors much of the time Carly was the CEO (1999-2005). I was in the room for many of the decisions she made. I can attest to the strength of Carly’s leadership, the accuracy of her vision and the quality of her management.
Carly was an excellent CEO. She led HP through one of the worst economic times in decades. While other Silicon Valley icons like Sun Microsystems disappeared, Carly’s vision and execution not only helped to save HP but made it a strong, more versatile company that could compete in the changing technology sector.
Critics often claim was fired at HP because she was unsuccessful. As a member of the board, I can tell you this is not true. Here’s what really happened.
In a country with more than 300 million people, it is remarkable how obsessed the media have become with just one — Donald Trump.
What is even more remarkable is that, after six years of repeated disasters, both domestically and internationally under a glib egomaniac in the White House, so many potential voters are turning to another glib egomaniac to be his successor.
No doubt much of the stampede of Republican voters toward Trump is based on their disgust with the Republican establishment. The fact that the next two biggest vote getters in the polls are also complete outsiders — Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina — reinforces the idea this is a protest.
It is easy to understand why there would be pent-up resentments among Republican voters. But are elections held for the purpose of venting emotions?
An election is not a popularity contest, or an award for showmanship. If you want to fulfill your duty as a citizen, then you need to become an informed voter. And if you are not informed, then the most patriotic thing you can do on Election Day is stay home.
Otherwise your vote, based on whims or emotions, is playing Russian roulette with the fate of this nation.
Can’t anybody around here play this war game?
Russia is sending troops into Syria, alongside the Iranian forces that have been fighting long since, to shore up the Assad regime.
The Iranians are convincingly accused of creating terror cells in Kuwait and Thailand and waging cyberwar and conventional terror attacks against Saudi Arabia.
We know that Iran organized a scheme to blow up a restaurant in Washington, another to bomb a passenger train between Canada and the U.S., and yet another to destroy Kennedy Airport.
They are all acts of war. Yet, the president and his followers insist that if there is no deal with Iran, “the only alternative is war.”
You’d think a blind man could see that the war was on, but no. War is instead described – by the Democrats – as A Very Bad Thing that only would happen if Congress didn’t follow President Obama’s orders.
Meanwhile, opponents of The Deal insist that war is actually more likely if we approve all the concessions granted the Iranians at Vienna. They, too, fail to see the war already ongoing in front of their noses, and engage in the heated debate over a fantasy.
Zurich, Switzerland — When you think of Switzerland what comes to mind?
Beautiful lakes surrounded by the Alps; a rich country with happy people; the home of milk chocolate, expensive watches and discrete bankers; a peaceful country that has not been at war in more than two centuries?
All that is true, and even more. Switzerland is at or near the top of almost every measure of a successful country, including the just released Human Freedom Index compiled by the Cato and Fraser Institutes, and others.
The world would be far better off if a majority of its countries were run like Switzerland. And in this way too: almost no one knows who the president of Switzerland is. Do you? That’s also something to emulate.
