Dr. Jack Wheeler
HIMALAYA HELICOPTER EXPEDITION
“Scoundrel’s View” of Mount Everest – Tibet North Face on left, Nepal Southwest Face on right
Can you imagine what it is like to actually be at Mount Everest? Or any other Himalayan giant – like Kanchenjunga, Annapurna, or Dhaulagiri – the greatest mountains on earth? To be in the presence of any one of them is a life-memorable experience.
To reach any one, you must trek for many days, over extremely rough mountainous terrain at very high altitude. You must be in exceptional physical condition to do so.
Which is why almost no one, even the most ambitious trekker, has ever been to all of them. Last May, I created an alternative: to the base camps of all eight 8,000 meter peaks in the Himalayas by helicopter, piloted by the most experienced mountain rescue pilots in the world.
Here’s our high altitude AS350 B3 coming in to land at the Khumbu Ice Fall on Mount Everest at 17,500 ft.
What we did in May was so astoundingly spectacular I can’t resist doing it again this November. Would you like to come with me?
Join the forum discussion on this postHALF-FULL REPORT 08/26/16
Good grief. What a disastrous, horrible, no-good lousy week this has been… for The PIAPS.
I’m sure you need cheering up after this depressing news, and if listening to a masterful British orator won’t do it, nothing will:
Nigel Farage, however, was the least of Shrillary’s worries this week. On Wednesday (8/24), the New York Post’s cover story was A Nation for Sale under Hillary Clinton. But this isn’t a Post scoop – this is an exposé of the Clinton Foundation’s naked criminality by the media’s gold-standard flagship, the Associated Press itself. Every newspaper in the country uses an AP newsfeed. As such, it cannot be ignored by the Libtard Media and it is utterly devastating.
Trump was fully justified to declare that, “It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history.”
Jack Kelly had a marvelous column this week on Journalists as Presstitutes. They are intentionally biased for the left, willful propagandists and shills for the Democrats.
There is another way they presstitute themselves that you should know about, for it will give you a deep insight into how journalism really works. We use a current story about Turkey in the New York Times as a prime example.
How’s this for a headline in this morning’s (8/26) London Daily Express: Favorite to be Next Dutch Prime Minister Vows to Ban the Koran and Close All Mosques. Yep, that’s Geert Wilders. He and his Dutch Freedom Party lead every poll there is by double digits, and the election is soon.
We have the HFR’s favorite judge, favorite Olympian, and Hero of the Week. Here we go.
WHERE THE SOVIET UNION STILL EXISTS
Tiraspol, Transnistria. Lenin lives. At least he still does here in the strangest country in Europe, as it insists on pretending it is a part of the Soviet Union.
We are in a landlocked and isolated sliver of Moldova that wanted no part of the breakup of the USSR in the wake of Berlin Wall falling in November 1989.
This is where the Soviet Union still exists – and where the people consider themselves Soviet citizens. They idolize Putin – and thus idolize Trump for being Putin’s friend.
HALF-FULL REPORT 08/19/16
He did it again! Just last night!
Yesterday (8/18) in Not Never Trump, I described three game-changing events this week providing positive reasons to be for a Trump Presidency rather than merely being against the nightmarish evil of a PIAPS Presidency.
Now there’s a fourth. In Charlotte, North Carolina last night, Trump delivered what is being called his New American Future speech. (The link is to both the full text and full video.)
It is no accident, comrades, that we are witnessing the transformation of Daffy Donald into Presidential Donald before our very eyes this week. Who else but Kellyanne Conway could have effected this?
Meanwhile, our current Pathetic POTUS was playing golf with some comedian yesterday. He interrupted his Martha’s Vineyard vacation to do a fundraiser for Hildebeast, but wouldn’t for the devastated people of Louisiana.
So where will both Trump and Pence be today? In Louisiana while Zero laughs through another 18 holes. Even the Associated Press (see the link) couldn’t ignore the brilliant (for Trump) and ghastly (for Zero) optics.
And where is Hillary? Not in Louisiana nor anywhere else public. She’s, ah… resting. Poor old gal runs out of gas easily these days.
Evidently it’s much worse than “exhaustion” from the brutal pace of campaigning. Her coughing fits, seizures, and bizarre behavior are now at a point where it’s legitimate to question her physical and mental fitness for office.
On Wednesday (8/17) at Trump campaign headquarters in the Trump Tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, campaign policy director Steve Miller convened a round table of 16 folks to discuss how to defeat political and terrorist Islam. I wasn’t there as I’m in Sofia, Bulgaria this week with my family.
Kellyanne was there, and let’s suppose – just suppose, for this is only a thought experiment – that she asks me to attend the next such meeting. What would I say?
NOT NEVER TRUMP
All TTPers know that I am not Donald Trump’s biggest fan. That I think he’s a seriously flawed candidate and that primary voters had some kind of mental breakdown choosing him over Scott Walker or Ted Cruz.
Now it’s time for the other shoe to drop. I am not a NeverTrumper. The principal reason, at least so far, is this bottom line: whatever his flaws, Trump is not evil, and Hillary Clinton is.
Trump has no lengthy history of espousing conservative principles with which to govern so we don’t know what he’d do as president. But we do know what Hillary would do – and that it would be vastly worse for America. The odds are very substantial that whatever Trump would do, it would be vastly better than what she would do.
Which means that I have no choice but to want him to win in November. My fear is that he won’t for three reasons: his flaws as a candidate, the overwhelmingly massive bias of the Lying Swine Media against him, and equally massive Democrat voter fraud. That’s a triple whammy which may prove impossible for him to overcome.
Nonetheless, we must soldier on and hope he wins, but I must admit such hope for me was – until this week – without enthusiasm. That is, I want a candidate for whom I can be passionately for, like Ronald Reagan. Rather, his opponent is someone I am passionately against, thus he’s the only alternative.
Suddenly that has changed. Within the last 72 hours, three events occurred providing reason to be positively for a Trump Presidency.
HALF-FULL REPORT 08/05/16
We start with a prayer. A year ago, we learned TTP’s Jack Kelly was diagnosed with multiple myeloma cancer and had but a few months to live. We asked you to pray for him. Jack is alive and well today.
This week we learned that TTPer Edd Forke’s wife Dona has been diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. You know Edd through his many marvelous comments on the Forum. He has become a personal friend to many, including me. Let’s put prayer to work for him and Dona. You can be sure they’ll read and appreciate any expression of support on the Forum. Thanks…
Laughter is considered the best medicine, and is also often the most effective criticism. The Laugh of the Week took place in the tiny hamlet of Arcadia, Iowa – population 460, halfway between Des Moines and Sioux City. It’s also an exposure of naked vulnerability – that the Lying Swine and the Democrats can dish it out, but they can’t take it…
Yesterday (8/04), NBCNews reported, “Trump Pushes Republican Party to Breaking Point.” I’ve been privy to private emails between heavy Pub hitters that say exactly the same thing. These are guys who desperately want Trump to win and prevent a PIAPS Presidency.
Trump’s behavior is so maddeningly frustrating to them especially now, with the Lying Swine making herculean efforts to magnify every Trump gaffe in order to cover up Obama-Clinton scandals.
The revolting spectacle of Dem operative and Sharia law advocate Khizr Khan, with his wife in a hijab silently next to him like a wooden Indian, was handed to Trump on a platter – as pointed out by USMC vet Chris Mark in a blistering take down of Khan…
There’s lots more in this HFR, lots of funny stuff too. And you won’t surprised at all who made our day as HFR Hero of the Week.
WHITE TRASH AND BLACK GIMMIDATS
Last Saturday (7/30), the New York Post published – next to a side bar with old photos of a naked Melania Trump – Why ‘White Trash’ Americans Are Flocking to Donald Trump.
Two days later on Monday (8/01), the New York Times published Black Lives Matter Coalition Makes Demands. Treating the OBLM – Only Black Lives Matter – with deference and respect, the libtards at the Times would be horrified at the suggestion their article should be entitled Why ‘Black Gimmidats’ Are Flocking to Hillary Clinton.
“White trash” is a racial slur on a par with the Forbidden N-word. If you Google it, you’ll get over 9 million hits. You’ll find thousands of articles arguing that Trump’s core supporters are “white trash.” The term is an overt sneer referring to “poor white people.”
On the other hand, you never see the term “black trash” referring to “poor black people.” Google has a lot of hits for it, but the vast majority of them refer to buying or supplying plastic black trash bags. Let’s substitute, then, the term “Black Gimmidats” for the OBLM crowd.
As we all know, from Hollywood movies to television series to books, academia, the media and pop culture, the one group of people it’s politically correct to be racist towards is whites.
So let’s state the obvious: the greatest and most destructive racial problem in America today is anti-white racism. Particularly so because of what such racist hatred is doing to whites themselves. It is causing them – from white limousine liberals to “check your privilege” white college kids to working-class whites who are now dying younger – to be auto-racist, racist towards themselves.
It is hard to think of anything that would improve life in America more than a cure for white auto-racism.
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/29/16
So it’s come to this. The most powerful, the most moral in its founding principles, the most prosperous and successful nation in the history of humanity has to choose between an egomaniacal buffoon and an evil crook to lead it.
Kafka himself couldn’t dream up the irony. We are forced to choose between two lunacies and it’s a no-brainer. We have to take a chance with the buffoon in order to stop the evil.
Just how evil is the person who has so justly earned the sobriquet of PIAPS – Pig In A Pants Suit? Let me tell you a story….
The bottom line here is that Trump is an amateur, a piker, a nobody in the scandal department compared to Hillary. No matter how much dirt she and the media dump on him over the next three months, it’s a molehill next to the Mons Olympus of Clinton Corruption.
There’s Benghazi-gate and Email-gate among so many others, but the real jaw-dropper is the Clinton Foundation combining treason and greed to a level beyond belief. Here’s a summary from Wednesday (7/27) on the current IRS investigation of the Clinton Foundation….
In my Stillicide article yesterday (7/28), I pointed out that “the best thing Trump has going for him is a lack of fear of envy.” That’s why he’s not intimidated by guilt-mongering and doesn’t pay obeisance to political correctness. It’s the most necessary, albeit not fully sufficient, condition for standing up to the Left.
And Islamofascism. On Tuesday (7/26), two piles of Islamic excrement butchered a Catholic priest in his church in Normandy, France in the name of Allah. In response, French President Hollande vowed to “wage war by every means” upon the Moslems of ISIS. With a Moslem population of 10% (6.3 million out of 63 million) in France, brave words by lily-livered French weenies mean nothing.
It’s worse in Germany because Angela Merkel is the world’s poster child for the fear of being envied. Elsewhere in Europe, however, a revolt against Islamofascism is growing. You’ll be stunned by this photo-essay depicting it…
We close with the morally magnificent achievement of our Hero of the Week.
THE LEFT’S STILLICIDAL STRATEGY TO DESTROY AMERICA
Let me introduce a new word into your vocabulary, a word that encapsulates the Left’s strategy to demolish every institution of American culture and the traditional values of American society.
The word is stillicide. The dictionary definition has nothing to do with politics, nor does it refer to some form of killing like suicide, genocide, homicide et al. It refers rather to a physical process derived from the Latin stillicidium: stilla, drops, plus cidium, a declension of cadere, to fall.
Stillicide, stilliciduous, stillicidal thus refer to “a continual dripping of water falling in drops.”
How about that for a light bulb going on in your head?
It sure explains, just to take one example, why race relations in America have gotten worse, far worse, after Zero’s election in 2008.
Why have Zero and his minions in the media done everything they could to divide us on race instead of uniting us, culminating today in the fascist thuggery of Only Black Lives Matter and the murder epidemic of white cops?
Because the hideous secret hidden in every Leftie soul is….
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/22/16
Back in the HFR saddle again. I can’t thank Jack Kelly enough for his great HFRs while I’ve been gone. Thanks, Jack!
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One takeaway from the GOP convention – Donald’s speechwriter sure is a lot better than Melania’s. It was delivered strongly with every word clearly articulated, and hit a lot of good notes. The best line was contrasting Hillary’s slogan for her followers, “I’m with her,” with his “I’m with you.”
Here’s the full text as prepared for delivery.
The trillion-dollar question is, Can we trust him to keep all the promises he made – especially when he provides no specifics on just how he’s going to achieve them?
Reuters is reporting that Trump is considering Harold Hamm as his Energy Secretary. Finally, a positive reason and a very good one to vote for Trump, rather than just as a vote against Hillary. Trouble is, there are almost no others. Here are two immediate examples…
Thus it should come as no surprise to you who the HFR Hero of the Week is…
The 2016 Republican Party Platform is 66 pages and worth reading. It even says the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are “the foundations of personal liberty” (p. 22). What Trump needs to pay laser-focus attention to is “Honest Elections and the Right to Vote” (p. 23)…
Libtards never cease to amaze with yet another example of looney tunes fascism. On Wednesday (7/20), we saw the emergence of their latest cause: use government guns to force us to eat less meat, with the audacity to blame our obesity epidemic on it instead of garbage sugar foods…
We close with the Question of November millions of voters must answer for themselves. And then, an enjoyable Best News of the Week.
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
This is the Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone. It’s not in some exotic remote place in the world, but right here in America.
You don’t get this view of it from the walkway along side. I was able to take it from a helicopter. Such a view helps you realize how beautifully spectacular America is. It’s that view I’d like to give you now, away from being flat on the ground surrounded by all the garbage of the latest newspaper headlines.
I’ve been asked by a friend whose kids have been raised in Europe to show them the American West, about which they know next to nothing. Their view of the US has been limited to places like downtown Manhattan and Palm Beach. My friend wanted them to experience the staggering grandeur of the West, its extraordinary history – plus the thrilling patriotism and cheerful friendliness of the people who live there.
The kids had the time of their lives, with an appreciation and love for America they’ll never forget. I’d like to share what we saw with you. It will refocus on what America really is – as beautiful, as glorious, as historical, with as decent a people, as any country that has ever existed in human history.
We have every right to be proud of our country, to be proud to be Americans. Let’s experience this together. Enjoy.
DRAKE AND THE SULTAN
Ternate, Spice Islands of the Moluccas, present day Indonesia. I am here in the place that started the Western exploration of the world.
The Spice Islands
It was the goal of Columbus in 1492 to get here – which of course he never did with the American continents getting in the way. Vasco da Gama decided to try the other way around Africa – which he did, reaching the southwest coast of India in 1498.
By 1512, Vasco’s fellow Portuguese made it all the way – to the fabled Spice Islands, the only source on earth for nutmeg, mace, and cloves. Since the Middle Ages, they were esteemed by Europeans for their medicinal and culinary properties.
As such, they were fantastically expensive, especially because the Arabs had a monopoly on the overland trade routes. Breaking the monopoly with sea routes meant unbelievable profits. So the Portuguese cashed in. A pocketful of nutmeg seed pods could buy you a home. Imagine what an entire shipload was worth.
Ferdinand Magellan convinced Portugal’s rival, Spain led by Charles V, that he could break the Portuguese spice monopoly by sailing west – for by now (1518) everyone knew there was an ocean on the other side of the Americas but no one had crossed it. Magellan did it, but was killed in the Philippines in 1521 before he got here.
So the Portuguese got to keep the Spice Islands, where they built their first fort – called Kastela – here on Ternate in 1522. The Spanish found there were almost unimaginable amounts of gold and silver for the taking in their new colonies along the west coast of South America and forgot about the Pacific Ocean.
Fifty years later, history was about to shift.
A BORNEO FOURTH
For me, this is an exceedingly cool way to celebrate the Fourth of July – handing a banana to a wild orang utan along a river in Borneo.
I’ve been on a houseboat on Borneo rivers for the past few days. This photo was taken earlier today.
I am here doing what I’ve loved to do my whole life – explore and have adventures in remote places in the world. I’ve been able to do this because I’m an American.
Sure, people from other countries are able to have the life they want, including one devoted to adventure – but it’s more difficult to do so.
It’s easier to do so in America than any other place on earth – because of the founding principles of our country that we celebrate today. Thus today for me is a celebration of the moral essence of our existence as Americans.
THE DEMOCRAT DEATH CULT
Tana Toraja, Sulawesi, Indonesia.
There couldn’t be a more appropriate and exotic place to discuss death cults than here. In the distant highlands of central Sulawesi undiscovered by any Westerner until little over a century ago, are a people called the Toraja who take propitiation of their deceased ancestors to a limit unmatched anywhere else.
Yet most interestingly, the Toraja have combined their ancestor worship with a devout Christianity. Tana Toraja (the Land of the Toraja) is a Christian haven within the world’s largest Islamic population. Churches here are as plentiful as mosques elsewhere in Indonesia, while a giant statue of Christ towers above Tana Toraja high on a mountaintop.
The Toraja are a people with deep pride and confidence in the worth of their culture. If there were anyone among them who lacked that pride and confidence, who felt ashamed and apologetic of their culture, they would be despised. If that someone felt so ashamed and apologetic that they wished and worked for their culture’s destruction, they would be regarded as demented.
There are such people among us, among our fellow Americans. There is a name for these people: Democrats. And it is critically important to understand something fundamental about them.
IDYLLIC ISOLATION
Kanton Atoll, Phoenix Islands, Pacific Ocean. You don’t get more isolated than this. The nearest inhabited island is over 1,000 miles away. The only visitors are via a private yacht about once a year or so or a Kiribati patrol boat bringing supplies once every six months.
We are the first private plane (our chartered King Air) to land here in years. 30 Kantonese islanders live here. You can imagine how happy they are to see us.
Neither you nor I could imagine living here. There is no radio, television, internet or cell phones, and hardly any electricity – a diesel-powered generator is fired up only occasionally. The only water is rainwater caught in cisterns. They subsist on fish, crabs, and coconuts, plus rice and other staples the patrol boat brings which has to last for six months or more.
They live in disintegrating ramshackle homes amidst colossal rusting wreckage – for this was once a flourishing airbase built by the US government during WWII and subsequently by Pan American Airways in the 50s. The base has been abandoned since the 70s, collapsed, rusting and forgotten.
So here we are, in a King Air 200 I managed to charter, all by ourselves with a handful of Kantonese in their utter isolation and what we would consider utter poverty. You’d think they would be full of anger and resentment for their lives – like so many Inner City Americans who enjoy a prosperity unimaginable to Kantonese – but the opposite is true.
The people here are genuinely and truly happy. Here’s how and why. And yes, with photos.
LOST IN FUN
Funafuti, Tuvalu. Welcome to FUN.
As you most likely know, airports around the world have a three-letter code in capital letters. Los Angeles for example is LAX, while Istanbul is IST. This place has the best airport code on earth: FUN. I’m lost in it again.
You first learned about Tuvalu (too-vah-loo) back in October 2013: Serendipity in the South Pacific, which I hope you can take the time to read again.
You learned how Tuvaluans persevered over incredible British vindictiveness, while maintaining a wonderful cheerfulness, rather than succumbing to anger and bitterness.
They still have that positive attitude, they haven’t succumbed, and they are still getting screwed. Here’s the situation – and the lesson for Americans.
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/03/16
What was it that Henry Kissinger said about the war between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran (1980-1988)?
“It’s a pity both sides can’t lose.”
That’s exactly the way I and millions of my fellow Americans feel right now. We want a pox on both the Pub and Dem parties – and their voters insistent on shoving the two worst presidential candidates of our lifetimes down our throats.
The only time either His Hairness or Her Shrillness ever tell the truth is when they are lambasting each other – as they did yesterday (6/02).
I remain convinced there will be what Jack Kelly calls today the Biden Switcheroo. He has his doubts, while I have far fewer. You may be surprised why.
We have the pathological madness of the week, the headline laugh of the week, a startling Hero of the Week, and we end with marvelously good news that’s thanks in large part to TTPers. Here we go….
HALF-FULL REPORT 05/27/16
It’s good to be back in the HFR saddle again. I’m so appreciative of the wonderful job my buddy Rod Martin did in my absence. Thanks, Rod!
I have to admit I’m writing this with a huge smile of gloat. For a year now – since the HFR of May 22, 2015 – I’ve been predicting the Dem nominee will not be The PIAPS but SloJoe Biden. What makes this prescient are two bombshells that dropped this week.
On Tuesday (5/24), Zero gave a speech in Hanoi, Vietnam (full text in the link). You only wish he’d praise capitalism, entrepreneurship, and economic opportunity for Americans as he did the Vietnamese. All in all though, it was a very good and important speech. Here’s why.
There are new reports on Russia. TTPers on the Forum are asking what this might mean militarily. It means, frankly, that Putin is all hat and no cattle. Let’s take a look at Ukraine to see why.
The real threat to America is not external, but internal. Every day now our country becomes more insane. Not metaphorically but literally, actually, clinically for real insane. This week we couldn’t have two clearer examples. Is there any sanity to be found amidst this? Yes.
We close with our Hero of the Week. Forgive me, but it’s personal.
TECTONIC EUROPE
Banja Luka, Republic of Srpska. Welcome to a country you never heard of. It’s a Christian country in Europe – and proudly so, unlike those Euroweenie countries like Germany busily Moslemizing themselves.
The churches and cathedrals here are magnificent –
It’s a peaceful, prosperous place – and great for having a beer inside a medieval fortress overlooking a beautiful river…
Problem is, it’s at the center of Tectonic Europe, where two geopolitical plates have been grinding against each other for centuries and still do today. It could get terribly worse. Here’s why.
THE REAL ATLANTIS
Knossos, Crete. Welcome to Atlantis. This is what it looked like. And this:
More nonsense has been invented about Plato’s myth of Atlantis – mentioned briefly in his Timaeus and Critias and nowhere else by anyone else in antiquity – than any other legend you care to name.
Yet like many myths, it was constructed out of something that really existed. Here’s the story and the lesson to be learned.
A YOUNGER AMERICA
[This is the speech I would have liked to have seen Ted Cruz give]
I want to talk today to the young people of America – to Americans who are young in age, to Americans who are still young at heart, and to Americans who want to feel young again.
I want a younger America, not an infantilized America.
An America young in spirit like it used to be and can be again, an America of opportunity and optimism – not an America old and tired in spirit, an America of opportunism and pessimism.
An infantilized America is what Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Socialists like Bernie Sanders, and Demagogues like Donald Trump want. All three preach the politics of subservience.
Hillary and Bernie want you to be subservient to the state. Donald wants you to be subservient to him. He has no politics other than Himself, no policies other than whatever will get people to worship him like Juan Perón or any other Banana Republic Dictator.
So let me ask you – do you want to be subservient or do you want to be free?
Which is it? If you want the former – well, be my guest, be a Clinton or Sanders or Trump acolyte.
If you want the latter, I ask your support in helping me getting rid of what I think is America’s Number One Problem.
AN OPEN LETTER TO REPUBLICAN PARTY CHAIRMAN REINCE PRIEBUS
Dear Chairman Priebus,
Last Friday (4/22), Politico ran a story headlined: Delegates Face Death Threats From Trump Supporters.
Such threats are becoming commonplace throughout the country. This is criminal activity, not political. Perhaps the most revealing line in the Politico article is: “The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.”
By not making any effort to ensure this criminal activity conducted by his supporters ceases and desists, Mr. Trump is aiding and abetting it, thus becoming an accomplice to the crime.
Trump supporters issuing threats of violence are neither conservatives nor Republicans of any stripe. They are thugs. Pure and simple. They are not engaging in democratic political activity. They are attempting to replace our democracy with a thugocracy. This can not be tolerated.
One of the more prominent examples of this is a Trump supporter named Gary Forbes, publisher of “Trump Magazine.” He’s compiling a database of photos of GOP convention delegates and their families, and overtly threatening them with “an extremely vicious response” should they vote for Cruz on a second ballot.
What follows is a quote directly from Forbes’ website. He has a very large following of thousands of Trump supporters all over the country. This is what he is explicitly advising them to do regarding a contested convention (underlining mine, italics his):
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/22/16
Sorry to start this with a bummer, but this is a stupid evil day. April 22 is the birthday of one of the greatest monsters in the history of human depravity -- Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, born in 1870, who adopted the pseudonym “Lenin” after the Lena River in Siberia.
It’s appropriate that Lenin’s birthday is the holiest day of the year by the world’s eco-fascists, which they celebrate as “Earth Day” – otherwise known as “Let’s-Return-to-the-Stone-Age-and-Live-in-a-Cave-Day.” I just wish they’d all do that and leave the rest of us alone.
On to something far more pleasant. You may have noticed the new Wheeler Expeditions link on the TTP home page. The site just got started and will see significant improvements in the next month. You may note that the first one offered is Hidden Pacific II. That’s because Hidden Pacific I got sold out before we could put it up.
The same with my Himalaya Helicopter Expedition, also sold out (scroll down on the “Upcoming Trips” page to see it). This is to reach the base camps of all the great Himalaya giants 8,000 meters or 26,000 feet high by helicopter – never been done before. So I leave for Kathmandu in just a few days.
In my absence, I’m happy to announce that my buddy and true Renaissance Man, Rod Martin, will once again be manning the HFR helm. Rod’s HFRs were really popular with TTPers while I was in India two months ago, and I know they will be again. Thanks, Rod!!
Ok – ready to laugh your head off? And have your jaw drop? And to side with the Mafia over Moslems? And to know the Hero of the Week? Here we go….
TRUMP, TREASON, AND THE TALIBAN
No, this is not to accuse Donald Trump of treason. But it sure is regarding who’s running his campaign now – Paul Manafort.
No one who reads Michael Isikoff’s report for Yahoo News on Wednesday (4/18), Top Trump Aide Lobbied for Pakistani Spy Front, and who has an accurate understanding of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) can conclude otherwise.
The man who hired Manafort, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, went to federal prison. According to the FBI Report on Fai’s guilty plea (Dec. 2011):
“For the last 20 years, Mr. Fai secretly took millions of dollars from Pakistani intelligence and lied about it to the U.S. government. As a paid operative of ISI, he did the bidding of his handlers in Pakistan while he met with U.S. elected officials, funded high-profile conferences and promoted the Kashmiri cause to decision-makers in Washington.”
And who in Washington arranged those meetings with elected officials, those conferences, and those promotions to DC decision-makers? Paul Manafort. He doesn’t belong running a presidential campaign. He belongs in jail with Syed Fai.
Here’s the background on just how evil the Pak ISI is, and how treasonous was Manafort’s work for it.
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/15/16
I love this guy. So do the 6,000 people he was talking to, who stood up and cheered when he said, “I’m deeply committed to taking Hillary Clinton from a pantsuit and putting her into a bright orange jumpsuit.” It was one of many standing ovations.
This speech of Darryl Green enabled him to win going away being on the GOP ballot in June to run for the US Senate. Those 6,000 people wildly cheering for him are the ones Trump viciously condemned for “rigging” the delegate vote against him in Colorado – who are getting death threats from Trumpistas.
But before we get into the weeds of the week, I think we all need a break from the weirdness engulfing America that’s beyond Franz Kafka’s wildest imagination. So here’s something completely out of the blue to make you laugh like you haven’t in a long, long time.
OK, into the weeds. Here’s my prediction for what’s going to happen regarding the rules and delegates at the GOP July convention. Feel free to lampoon me if I’m wrong – but not until July.
We close with the latest news from the Putin Café in Russia. I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/08/16
Of course you know that Wisconsinites are affectionately called “Cheeseheads” because they make the best cheese in America. Thus NBC News chronicled Ted Cruz’s “Top 5 Cheese-Related Moments” while campaigning.
How can you not love a guy who can think on his feet this fast with a sense of humor this good?
Monday, April 4. As Ted Cruz was walking out the door at Glorioso's Italian Market in Milwaukee, he was asked: "Should we arm the cheese curds?"
He responded: "Now that's funny. Alright you convinced me, yes, we need to arm the cheese curds, and you know if we send the cheese curds into ISIS, it'll fatten 'em up and they'll go down immediately ... Maybe if they get enough cheese curds they'll just decide they don't need this whole jihad thing, and they should just happily eat cheese curds and live in peace with their fellow man."
No wonder he won Wisconsin’s primary by a landslide.
We have news about the Kurds – we were talking about them, weren’t we? – Kim Kardashian believe it or not, Israel, the Chicoms, the worst scumbag in Congress getting his, and the upcoming contested convention. Not the one you’re thinking of – the other one.
We close with something that will make you cry with tears of… well, you decide.
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/01/16
Welcome to the April Fools’ HFR! Let’s get started with Being Clean Inside and Out with Royal Orchard Fruity Soap.
We also have April Fools’ suggestions for you.
The internet is awash with speculation on Trump’s campaign and Trump himself falling apart this week. I discussed it in The Trump Titanic yesterday. This morning, Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal had a very insightful and compassionate observation about Trump supporters.
This hard fact, however, has now emerged: Trump will not get the GOP nomination. You can take that to the bank.
Going geopolitical, you may want to secure an adult beverage because this is going to get engrossing. An intriguing connection between Vladimir Putin and Indiana Jones arose this week.
After the HFR Hero of the Week, we close with the funniest – and most revealing – April Fools’ story of the day
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/25/16
What do you see here? A group of Moslem “refugees” walking in a snowstorm headed for the German Welfare State?
Well, yes – but look more closely. There are seven men and one woman – and the woman, unlike the men, is barefoot. What’s more, she is carrying two children – and not one of these seven men is lifting a finger to help her.
This encapsulates the incapacity of a culture that looks upon and treats women as sub-human to adapt to the moral norms of Western Christian Civilization.
That Europe would allow people in the millions from such a culture to flood their shores is suicidal. The horror of Brussels on Tuesday (3/22) should not come as any surprise in the slightest. This is what being suicidal begets – you become prey for the predators.
This is a teachable moment. It is prime time to learn – or relearn as TTP has been teaching this for years – the root cause of the West’s and America’s suicidal inability to defend itself from foreign threats, be they Moslem terrorism, tsunamis of illegal immigration, or an America-hating president.
EUROPE HAS A NEW LEADER
In May of 1989, I had a cup of coffee with a young man in a café in Nickelsdorf, Austria.
In his mid-twenties, he had crossed an unguarded section of the border with Hungary just two hundred yards away to meet me. There was mud on his shoes from the fields he had crossed.
He was a founder of an Anti-Communist freedom movement in Budapest called Fidesz (the Hungarian acronym for Alliance of Young Democrats). Since 1983, I had made it my business to meet people such as him.
For six years, I had been spending time with armed guerrilla movements fighting wars of liberation within Soviet Third World colonies – in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique and elsewhere. Now, with Soviets defeated in Afghanistan (February 1989), it was time to focus on the new democracy movements in Eastern Europe.
The young man explained in halting English what Fidesz stood for and what they wanted to accomplish – liberation from Soviet tyranny by peaceful means, real democracy with all the freedoms considered normal in the West, to rejoin Western Civilization again.
The more I listened, the more he answered my questions clearly and without guile, the more I was impressed. He was serious, committed, and very smart. I made my decision.
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/18/16
On Wednesday (3/16), Megyn Kelly interviewed Ted Cruz.
At 4:25 Cruz explains why Trump is the one candidate Hillary can beat. At 7:30 he explains how he’ll get a majority of delegates and avoid a contested convention.
But in case there is, here’s a neutral solution for avoiding it. Plus a slew of convincing reasons (beyond Cruz’s) why Trump has no chance of beating the PIAPS in November.
We have to get out of here, however, so we see what’s happening with Putin, and bad news in China. The Hero of the Week will surprise you, yet you may cheer nonetheless.
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/11/16
Marco scored home runs in the Miami debate last night, but does he have a chance to win Florida on Tuesday? Cruz obliterated Trump, so how will he do on Super Tuesday 3? What advice did Jeb Bush give Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich in private meetings yesterday?
What is a far greater worry than a brokered Pub convention to both Trump and Hillary? You’ll get the chills finding out.
What’s killing the whales dying en masse on English Channel beaches? Why are so many Iranians converting to Christianity? Who’s the hot young blonde that the HFR Hero of the Week? You’ll laugh your head off seeing what’s she’s done.
This plus videos and pics in this week’s Half-Full Report!
HOW PATRIOTIC IS MARCO RUBIO?
This question is in no way meant to disparage Rubio’s core patriotism. He obviously loves America, means it no harm, is a good decent moral person who’s solidly conservative in most ways (albeit his fatal error on Gang of 8 Amnesty).
If he were the GOP nominee I would vote for him without the slightest hesitation. He would be light years preferable to the PIAPS or Crackpot Bernie or SlowJoe.
But that’s not the issue at hand. For the reality is that, after last night (3/08) winning a total of 0 delegates – zip, zero, nada – in Michigan, Mississippi, Idaho and Hawaii, Rubio is a dead man walking towards the nomination. His candidacy is a busted flush (defined as “something worthless that had great potential”).
Trump, on the other hand, is a four-flusher. A phony vulgar scam-artist braggart, all hat and no cattle whether in political principles, business acumen, character and integrity, or plain moral decency. His stubby little fingers cannot – cannot as a mortal necessity – be allowed access to the presidential codes for launching nuclear weapons.
Marco Rubio is not going to be the GOP presidential nominee in 2016. It is now his patriotic duty to do whatever he can to prevent Donald Trump from being that nominee instead. That means it is his patriotic duty to do the only thing to stop Trump.
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/04/16
Port Blair, Andaman Islands. Welcome to the most interesting islands on earth for an anthropologist, as they are home to the world’s only Paleolithic people, untouched and uncontacted since they arrived here 40,000 years ago.
We don’t even know what they call themselves. Since they live on North Sentinel Island (out to the left of South Andaman in the map, we call them Sentinelese.
In the HFR of February 1, 2013, they were the HFR Heroes of the Week for being the world’s greatest example of sustained defiance of external authority over their liberty. The relevant excerpt of that HFR is appended at the end below.
Who might be the HOTW today? Figuring that out is the task at hand. First however, I must express my deep appreciation and gratitude to my buddy Rod Martin for writing such a wonderful series of HFRs while I’ve been in India. From all the many kudos expressed in the Forum, my opinion is shared by many TTPers. Thanks, Rod!!
My opinion on Trump, however, is not shared by all TTPers. But that’s the deal here – I get to say what I want, and you get to disagree if you want.
Thus I was overjoyed to see Trump get sliced and diced last night in Detroit. The most revelatory moment came right at the start, when out of the blue he gratuitously informed the entire planet exactly why he has such a massively boastful yet paper-thin ego:
STRANGLING PARADISE
Bangaram Atoll, Laccadive Islands, India. Welcome to the Strangled Paradise. Sure looks beautiful doesn’t it?
Thatch huts under swaying palms, perfect white sand beach, crystal clear water of translucent turquoise. Do you wish you were here?
Don’t.
The picture is real – I just took it. This place could be a real dream-paradise, but it’s not. And there is a very clear reason why.
The Laccadives are a microcosm for India. It’s critical for the world it not be.
BERNIE IN INDIA
Cochin, Kerala, India. Welcome to India’s Malabar Coast, known as the Garden of Spices for 5,000 years.
Trade routes for black pepper and other spices were established with ancient Sumer by 3,000 BC, and continued with Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome. By 573 BC, there was a flourishing Jewish merchant community here.
In 52 AD, St. Thomas the Apostle, one of Jesus’ 12 Disciples, arrived in Cochin to establish one of the very earliest Christian churches, which continues to thrive today, the St. Thomas Christians.
After Vasco da Gama’s pioneering a sailing route from Portugal around Africa to here in 1498, the Portuguese made Cochin the center of their spice trade, ruling here for 163 years and further cementing Christianity.
They were followed by the Dutch, then the British, thus after almost 2,000 years, it is little wonder that there are Christian churches of various denominations everywhere and devoutly attended – from huge centuries-old cathedrals to modern glass temples: [see photos in main text]
Thus it is also little wonder that Kerala is India’s most prosperous state, with many people living very well:
But where there is prosperity, there is envy. So it is little wonder too that Kerala is the bastion of the Communist Party of India (CPI), and of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI(M)) for whom the CPI isn’t sufficiently filled with envious hate:
The Hammer and Sickle is ubiquitous:
Bernie Sanders would feel right at home.
HOW DID THE ANCIENT GREEKS KNOW WHAT AMERICA’S FATE IS?
It’s a proverb of the Ancient Greeks so old it predates their great poets such as Sophocles (496-406 BC) who quotes a version of it in Antigone. They applied it to individuals, especially kings.
Yet it applies with equal force to countries, societies, nations, and civilizations. Turn the pages of a historical atlas to see the evidence, as they emerge, rise, flourish, subside, then vanish from history – century after century for thousands of years, all over the world.
This terrible truth is being applied to America today. There is a now-famous quote – attributed to many but its author is so far unknown – that observes:
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.
The Greeks if observing today would note that this quote applying to Zero could apply equally to Donald Trump.
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/29/16
I woke up this morning to a deluge of Forum comments on my Trump Derangement Syndrome yesterday. A large number of them were from Trump supporters who strongly disagreed with me.
They did so with courtesy and grace, with reasoned arguments rather than schoolyard insults. Trump could learn a lesson from them. I can’t thank them enough. We can continue to agree to disagree, and do so with mutual respect. I am so proud of my TTPers.
Which brings me to my gratitude for Rod Martin. Rod has been a dear and close friend of mine for more years than we both care to admit. Ours is a mutual admiration society. And of course, he’s an avid TTPer. Read his bio in the link, and you’ll quickly be excited to know Rod will be manning the HFR helm in my absence. Thanks, Rod!
Here’s the full text of the GOP candidate debate last night (1/29). It was glorious to have a real debate without Trump in the way, a clear demonstration of how much better the whole Pub primary campaign would have been without him.
Trump made a disastrous mistake in wimping out of the debate, afraid of a girl. The Fox debate last night dwarfed Trump’s egomaniacal competing rally, 4.5 times as many, 12.5 million vs. 2.78 million viewers. In fact, the headline is: Debate Without Trump Got Better Ratings Than Last Debate With Trump.
Cruz took advantage and closed the deal with Iowans with what Carl von Clausewitz called the schwerpunkt, the decisive point. At least, that’s what I think will happen Monday. We’ll see.
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/22/16
DONALD PERÓN
The GOP prez race came into sharp clear focus this week with Trump overtly morphing into an American Juan Perón.
100 years ago, Argentina was in a race with America to be the most successful economy in the world. Its GDP per capita was higher than Germany’s, France’s, or Italy’s. That was long ago, for thanks to a succession of demagogic populists, stretching back to Juan Perón (1895-1974), the country is a wreck.
That’s The Parable of Argentina, The Economist’s warning to any country tempted to embark on its version of Peronism – that it risks becoming “the Argentina of the 21st century.”
This is precisely what America risks with Donald Perón. On Tuesday (1/19) in Iowa, he abandoned the slightest pretense of being anything other than a crony capitalist wedded-to-the-establishment populist vote-panderer.
What more could it possible take for Trumpkins to wake up from their hypnotic trance, to realize they have been suckered by a charismatic demagogue like Juan Perón, a mentally imbalanced narcissist like Obama, who only wants fame-power-adoration without principles or mercy?
His election would be the death of conservatism in America and of any chance to regain our freedom or Constitution. Because conservatives will have abandoned every single conservative principle they claim to possess in selling their souls to him.
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/15/16
Ted Cruz Makes Donald Trump His Mitch. That’s got to be the best headline on last night’s Pub debate. And it was so satisfying to hear the audience boo Trump as he made a horse’s ass of himself.
Beyond the fireworks and one-liners, however, was a useful lesson in morality and patriotism….
Meanwhile, I’m breathing easier this morning with Cruz looking like he’ll win Iowa after all. Trump lied last night when he said he was leading in all the latest Iowa polls. Plus this bleak story Wednesday (1/13) in the NYT about how lousy Trump’s ground game is in Iowa. Then there are the two Gallup polls released Wednesday…
Now that’s all out of the way, let’s get to the best news of the week: The PIAPS is going over the edge. Here she is on Tuesday (1/12) equating “white terrorism” and “police violence” with ISIS…
We’ll also have some fun, explain why food prices are sky high, reveal a wonderful Hero of the Week, and close with a personal thank you from me.
THREE STRIKES AND I’M OUT
I’ve never used TTP as a confessional, but there’s always a first time. I’m in a state of existential crisis.
Maybe it’s sparked by what happens tonight in Charleston, South Carolina. It could be a pivot point of history – for the world, for America, and my own life.
Strike One for me was my countrymen in the millions being literally deranged enough to elect a man who wanted God to damn America.
Surely, I thought, this must be a temporary insanity. Normal people have the capacity to go around the bend, then come to their senses, happens all the time. As Zero proved himself to be just as evil as I knew he was, I comforted myself in the conviction that the Curse of Zero would be over in 2012. It was impossible, inconceivable, unimaginable, that Americans would re-elect him.
Yet they did. It doesn’t matter that the Dems rigged the vote. What matters is that the election was close enough for them to cheat and rig it. That was Strike Two.
Still, it never occurred to me that there would ever be a Strike Three. Now it has.