TRUMP BREAKS CNN
The embattled, confused, and doomed far-left CNN is about to lose another Chairman/CEO. According to numerous reports, after just a little over a year at the dying network, Chris Licht is out, he’s toast… Chris Licht is moving to Donesville.
Lol.
Trump broke CNN.
The walls really started closing in (if you’ll pardon the expression) on Licht after former President Trump’s CNN town hall triumph last month.
Because Trump was allowed to state his beliefs and come off as charming and in command, the Woke Nazis in the media, including at CNNLOL, freaked out. Licht tried to trip Trump up. Of course, he did. He’s a leftist.
His mistake was having a lightweight like Kaitlan “Nurse Ratched” Collins moderate. She tried her worst, Trump did his best, and the Woke Gestapo never forgives.
The real joy in all of this is that CNN is so discredited and irrelevant now that all this backstabbing and corporate maneuvering is like watching ants go to war in a jar.
HERE’S THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION 2024 GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES MUST ANSWER
There is one fundamental question that any candidate vying for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 2024 must answer — but that as of yet has gone largely unaddressed, at least publicly, as the field spars over significant but ultimately subordinate issues.
The question is this: How will you win the general election under the present voting system?
An inability to answer this question clearly, compellingly, and convincingly imperils Republican odds of retaking the White House, no matter how favorable their prospects might look come next November. It is incumbent on anyone who wants to earn the Republican presidential nomination to answer this question at the outset, and to operate accordingly.Here’s a summary analysis of the daunting problems any GOP candidate faces, and a path to a possible solution.
THE NDIKI DRUM
Famboun, Cameroon. This is a Ndiki Drum. It is used by the Sultan of Bamoun to call his subjects to their end-of the-year Nguon festival over which he presides. It can be heard for miles.
The carved wooden forearms and hands propped up at the drum’s end are not the original drumsticks. They are symbolic for what the real drumsticks used to be. Until the British and French put an end to the custom in the 1920s, the Ndiki drumsticks were human arms, amputated at the elbow off captured slaves. Four drummers were needed to properly pound the drum, each requiring two drumsticks: eight amputated human arms in total.
The horror of slavery in Africa was ended by Western colonialists. In its place they introduced roads, railroads, electricity, an impartial rule of law instead of law favoring one tribe over another, and other benefits of civilization. They did a lot of stupid damage to African cultures, true.
But that is vastly outweighed by getting rid of slavery – exemplified by how this drum was pounded until less than 100 years ago. If you have a child or grandchild in school with woke teachers, you might have them bring this picture to class, and explain how the benefits of Western Civilization so greatly outweighs its liabilities. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #124 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE STRANGE PANDEMIC OF WHITE DISPARAGEMENT
TTP’s favorite t-shirt – wear it with Pride
[VDH has done it again – here are excerpts to whet your appetite!]
Like the mysterious omnipresence of transgenderism in popular culture, all of a sudden, the obsession with whites as a Satanic collective has become a national fad—a pet-rock or hula-hoop-like collective madness…
Class apparently now means nothing. Do Barack Obama’s “clingers,” Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” and Joe Biden’s “semi-fascist Ultra-MAGAs,” all share the same values as those embraced by Hunter Biden, Jane Fonda, and Adam Schiff, by virtue of some mystical bonds of whiteness?...
For the racialist careerist, the less racism there is to find, all the more essential it is to root it out somehow, somewhere. So, here arrives a new genre of manufactured hate crimes, whose logic is “even if it did not happen, it reminds us that it could have happened.”…
The dearth of actual racism also demands a new set of adjectives that serve as something like sophisticated detectors to discover otherwise invisible natural gas fumes. The adjective “systemic” means only the select can now spot racism. Like air, it is everywhere but invisible and thus requires battalions of diversity, equity, and inclusion inspectors to use their training to expose it in the common atmosphere….
Where does this all lead?
We are wasting trillions of dollars in capital, labor, and time in tribal cannibalism as our friends abroad watch in horror, and our enemies savor our decline into collective suicide—while we sink into debt, our cities turn medieval, our border disappears, our criminal justice system collapses, and our military chases its tail.
PUTIN’S WAR IS AMERICA’S OPPORTUNITY
People take shelter from Russian missile attack in a subway station in Kyiv
American policy conversations about Ukraine often assume that Ukraine is a problem. For some, it represents a distraction from China. Others fear Russian escalation and retaliation. Still others worry about the financial cost of supporting Ukraine’s army and propping up its war-blighted economy.
These concerns are real and have their place, but they miss the main point. Vladimir Putin’s ill-judged, ill-planned and ill-prosecuted war has ignited a national awakening in Ukraine. The country emerging from Putin’s War will be a formidable new force in Europe whose interests and outlook place it firmly in alignment with the U.S.
The Ukraine that emerges from this baptism by fire will be a formidable country with a battle-tested army, and it is going to transform the strategic landscape. It will join Poland, the Baltic republics and the Scandinavian countries in a defense-minded bloc against Russian expansion.
Further, any end to the war widely perceived as a defeat for Mr. Putin will do more than create a powerful new ally for the U.S. Here’s why.
THE SMALL-SPOTTED RING-TAILED GENET
It’s not a cat, nor raccoon, nor lemur. Genets are part of a small carnivorous mammal group called viverrids, distantly related to hyenas, mongooses, tigers and lions. They hunt animals smaller than them like mice both on the ground and in the trees which they are very good and quick at climbing. You see them in Tropical and Southern Africa, but rarely will one pose like this as he did for me. Going on an Africa safari is not all about seeing the big iconic animals, but being lucky enough to spot small yet beautiful creatures such as this. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #144 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
NO APOLOGY, NO FUTURE
Map by the Lansing Institute
[This Monday’s Archive, “No Apology, No Future,” was originally published on April 28, 2005. 18 years ago, a prediction that Russia would disintegrate as did the Soviet Union was almost unheard of. Now it seems ubiquitous. Google Russia + collapse, +dissolution, or +decolonize will result in millions of hits. The List of active separatist movements in Russia in Wikipedia advocating secession from Moscow will astound you. Russia is accelerating into centrifugal chaos, which won’t take TTPers by surprise, as they were forewarned many years ago.]
Budapest, Hungary, October 1997. I was in Budapest speaking to a conference of international business leaders. Another speaker was a Moscow television news commentator well-known in Russia, Boris Notkin.
He informed his audience about how humiliated Russians felt, losing their Empire and the Cold War, not winning many medals in the Olympics, and having their Mir space station go belly-up. He warned of a dangerous anti-Americanism emerging among Russians, who resentfully blamed America for their problems.
A gray-haired gentleman with a Central European accent stood up and asked Boris a question:
“In addition to their feelings of humiliation and resentment, do Russians have any feelings of remorse for inflicting Communism upon so many countries? After their defeat in World War II, the Germans apologized to the world for being Nazis and for the horrible atrocities Nazism committed. After their defeat in the Cold War, will the Russians ever apologize to the world for being Communists and the equally horrible atrocities Soviet Communism committed?”
Boris looked straight at the man and coldly answered, “No. Russians feel no remorse. They will not apologize.”
THE SHRINE OF A SILK ROAD SUFI SAINT
In hidden dunes of the Takla Makan Desert of Chinese Turkestan, you find pilgrimage sites such as this devoted to Sufi saints revered by the Uighur (wee-ger) people who live in oases on the great desert’s edges. The trade route connecting the oases is the Southern Silk Road traversed by Marco Polo in 1273.
Sufism is the ancient peaceful interpretation of Islam. Just as Jesus advised the Pharisees to seek God in their hearts, not through the robotic repetition of religious laws and rules, so do the Sufis. Just as Jesus preached a philosophy of non-violence and benevolence, so do the Sufis. Sufism teaches that the path to Islamic enlightenment is not through compulsion of any kind, but through a personal ecstatic experience of the Divine.
Thus these ramshackle shrines in an uninhabited roadless wilderness – you get to them by donkey cart – are havens of serenity in a chaotic world. This is one of the remotest places on earth, but if you ever manage to get here, you will feel serenity in your heart. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #183 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE REAL FLAG
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – QARI BABA
Afghanistan, 1984. Yes, that’s me with the legendary Qari Baba, Commander of the Harakat Mujahaddin waging a war of liberation against the Red Army of the Soviet Union – and my dear friend. I told him he looked like a combination of Genghiz Khan and Buddha, and he couldn’t stop laughing. We had so many extraordinary experiences together – like blowing up the Soviet High Command of Bala Hissar in Ghazni.
After the war was won with the final Soviet retreat in February, 1989, Qari Baba became the Governor of Ghazi Province. Then Pakistani Intelligence (ISI) created the Taliban to seize control of the country. Qari Baba had to take up arms anew against them. In March of 2006, he was assassinated by a Taliban hit team on orders from the ISI. I will never ever forget him. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #111 photo ©Jack Wheeler)