HALF-FULL REPORT 03/17/23
The Saint Patrick’s Day Report
Today is Saint Patrick's Day celebrating the passing of Ireland's patron saint. Rather than talk about the festivities and libations enjoyed worldwide, we explore the schism between the Irish and Roman Catholic Church. The divide has been there since the fifth century. However, it grows wider as the Vatican goes ever more woke, and the Irish refuse to follow.
American cardinals of substantially Irish descent have been meeting in Houston for some time to discuss a possible church synod. A Houston Synod will replace Vatican II if Rome chooses to follow along. Otherwise, it would form the foundation of a New World Catholic Church based mainly on the unique features of the Irish Church as established by Saint Patrick.
These things only happen a few times every thousand years. As expected, the possibility has drawn spooky attention from organizations such as ROCOR, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, which is doing backflips to support a schism in the Western Church. Would Saint Patrick approve? He was the guy that converted the pagans and Druids to Christianity, and he did it with a particular style and masculine swagger.
The bank failures last week might be the tip of the iceberg. Other banks are showing stress as their bond portfolios are incinerated by inflation. The world's power players are alert and taking radical inflationary steps. But hmmm, won't more inflation create a feedback loop that hurts more banks?
The Biden family has been taking money from China through shell companies. This appears to be a severe crime. So far, no congressional investigators have vanished or thrown a wrench into the investigation.
Meta is laying off another 10,000 employees. Their core technology did not turn out to be what they desired. The problem with hiring for woke instead of merit is that companies end up with dysfunctional systems and poor products. Meta is in trouble.
Ukraine is maintaining a robust demand for artillery shells. The United States is drawing down prepositioned stocks worldwide, but the numbers are not good. We currently need at least four new production lines for 155 mm artillery shells. But we lack the industrial infrastructure to build those new production systems. From personal experience this week, I can attest that DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are DIE. The natation's schools have created a compliant workforce, not a critically thinking workforce. This must be solved immediately.
OMG! The O'Keefe Media Group is online. We see throughout this week's HFR the growing obsolescence of big media. The production base of entire companies can be replaced with one or a few iPhones. This massive change to the 100-year narrative coincidentally aligns with the Frankfurt School march through the institutions. The Fourth Turning grinds on…
Finally, we come to J6. Much of this was covered in yesterday's Skye's Links. What was not said was the utter and total destruction of the credibility of the Federal Government will not fade away. Narrative control is lost, and the government's crimes are truly shocking.
Power will devolve to the states.
IT’S MARCH 17TH!
FLASHBACK FRIDAY THE BAMIAN BUDDHA
Bamian, Afghanistan 1973. I spent some time in the Bamian Valley north of Kabul 50 years ago. What you see is the largest of the Bamian Buddhas carved into to sandstone cliffs in 600 AD by a Central Asian people who revered Buddha and called themselves Ebodai. It stands 180 feet tall. The Bamian Valley was a Buddhist pilgrimage site, with thousands of monks in monasteries and temples from roughly 100 AD until 800 AD, the time of the Moslem conquest of Afghanistan.
It was left untouched until the Moslem Emperor of India, Aurangzeb (son of Shah Jehan, builder of the Taj Mahal), blew off the statue’s legs with artillery in 1700. Then in 1890, the Moslem Afghan King of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan, ordered the Buddha’s face above the nose sliced off. The same Islamic practice of literal de-facing conducted upon ancient Egyptian statues including the Sphinx.
It was in 2001 that the Afghan Taliban blew up the entire statue you see here along with others as anti-Islamic “idols.” I consider myself immensely fortunate to witness this extraordinary work of historic art while it still existed.
(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #260 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE WORLD’S REMOTEST INHABITED ISLAND
That would be Tristan da Cunha in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. Some 260 Tristanians live here, all British citizens as the island is a UK Territory, in the island’s only community of Edinburgh-of-the-Seven-Seas. There’s no way to fly here – you have to take a boat for at least a week from Cape Town (and then a week back).
Tristanians are among the world’s most special people. Since the island was first settled in 1810, there has never been a single murder, abortion, or divorce among them. They are at peace with themselves, unfailingly cheerful, hospitable, and contented. If you are lucky enough to reach here, you may not want to ever leave. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #42 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 03/16/23
Breaking News! Kim Jong Un Attends Ivy League University To Learn New Brainwashing Techniques
Actually, Kim now wants to change schools. “Columbia students are pretty woke-washed,” he notes, “but the kids at Stanford leave them in the dust, so I’m transferring immediately.” This, after a woke gang of Stanford Law School students, led by an associate Dean of DEI shouted down a 5th Court of Appeals Judge who came to speak before the student Federalist Society:
The lesson:
Wisdom from the Mises Institute on the new Puritanism. The fear of North Korea defector Yeomani Park as she visited Columbia University—“I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying”—is a grave warning to our country.
DESANTIS IS FLAT-OUT WRONG ON UKRAINE
DON’T LOOK AWAY, GOV. DESANTIS! NYPost today (3/15)
Last month (2/23), the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel told us that Ukraine War Is Ron DeSantis’s Security Test.
Now, after months of near-silence and innuendo, Florida Gov. and GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis decided to speak about Ukraine, removing all doubt about his position. He flunked the test, and badly – joining what Strassel calls “the GOP surrender caucus.”
While his statement on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on Monday (3/13) makes a handful of valid points, it is ridden with a fundamental misunderstanding of the war and US geopolitical interests. Most fundamentally, he fails to understand the stakes of the conflict, calling it a “territorial dispute” in his words. In this, DeSantis could not possibly be more flat-out wrong.
TRAD-WIFE TREND MAKING FEMINISTS FURIOUS
It started with young women half-joking about being angry with the feminist movement for “liberating” women so they now have to get up to go to work to pay their own bills.
Then a trend on TikTok began emerging that gained traction very quickly. It was women simply posting their daily lives as traditional housewives. They cooked, they cleaned, they looked nice for their breadwinning husband, and they took care of the children during the day.
It’s a trend being called “tradwife.” And, wow, is it making woke women just oh so mad…
THE ROCK-HEWN CHURCHES OF LALIBELA, ETHIOPIA
900 years ago, the Church of Saint George (Bete Giyorgis in Amharic) was not built – it was hand carved downwards from a horizontal rock ledge. There is nothing like the rock-hewn churches in Lalibela anywhere else in the world.
Christianity was established in Ethiopia in 330 AD and has flourished ever since. Experiencing the devotion still so very much alive in one of the oldest Christian countries on earth is inspiring. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #26 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WOKESTER APOCALYPSE AT SILICON VALLEY BANK
On the left, they're claiming President Trump triggered the meltdown of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday (3/10) through signing off on deregulation. On the right, they're saying it was wokester priorities that drove the bank bust.
First, here's their wokesterly profile: Their corporate governance charter was full-speed ESG; Their corporate code of conduct went big on diversity, inclusion, and equity; they had a woke boss for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, who was busy organizing a month-long Pride campaign and a "Lesbian Visibility Day."
Second is economist Steve Hanke assessment: “SVB was a poorly run bank, a disaster waiting to happen. Any regulator worth his salt should have seen this coming long ago.”
Once again, the Dems’ one-size-fits-all excuse for anything they screw up – that it’s Trump’s fault – doesn’t wash.
THE BEST SOLUTION TO BIDEN’S GUT-BUSTING BUDGET
Senator Good Ole Boy, John Kennedy of Louisiana
Crazy Joe Biden released a new budget recently, and it’s absolutely gut-busting. With the topline total hitting an eye-watering $6.9 trillion, it would be the most expensive budget in American history, and it’s not even close. It’s so bad that it makes Barack Obama look conservative.
Luckily, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who is famous for his dry sense of humor, has the perfect solution for what to do with it.
“Sen. John Kennedy: ‘The only way I know how to improve the President’s budget is with a shredder.’
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) March 12, 2023”
Hammer, meet nail. Biden’s budget would be an abject disaster, both from the standpoint of fiscal sanity and from a policy perspective as well.