HALF-FULL REPORT 06/20/25
Flaming Cliffs of the Gobi photo ©Jack Wheeler
These are the Flaming Cliffs of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, made famous by American paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews’ discovery of dinosaur eggs here in 1923. I took this picture just a few days ago on my Explore Mongolia expedition with your fellow TTPers. Now I’m back home. Yet a part of me is still there in Mongolia’s vastness.
There’s no Internet out there so for weeks I was blissfully unaware of the outside world’s shenanigans. Only when I got back to Mongolia’s capital of Ulan Bator was I able to get online – and the first thing I did was read Mike Ryan’s HFRs of the last three weeks. They are beyond brilliant. Frankly, they are genius like no other website is graced with. Do yourself a favor this weekend by savoring them. Thanks yet again, Mike…
So here we go. Welcome to the Summer Solstice HFR. What say we start with what everyone in Israel is watching this morning:
Joke circulating in Israel at the moment: pic.twitter.com/jE7CaMFQgK
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) June 19, 2025
Or:
Instead, we wake up this morning (6/20) to: Trump To Decide ‘Within Next Two Weeks’ Whether To Join Iran Strikes — White House.
Two weeks? Israel doesn’t have that time, author Josh Hoffman notes, with Mullah Missiles destroying Israeli hospitals.
“Let’s be clear: This isn’t war in the fog. This is evil in full daylight. Iran, under longtime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is not a rational actor seeking negotiation. It is a genocidal theocracy hell-bent on regional domination and the elimination of the Jewish state. Sitting across the table from Khamenei’s puppets is not diplomacy; it’s appeasement. It’s Munich 1938 with WiFi.
During the 1930s, appeasement wasn’t just a policy; it was a moral failure cloaked in respectability. Neville Chamberlain’s “peace for our time” bought six years of continental war, millions of deaths, and the Holocaust. Today, Washington is flirting with the same delusion: that a regime driven by martyrdom and messianism can be talked into peace.
You don’t reason with tyrants who see restraint as weakness. You don’t change minds that have already committed themselves to the destruction of entire nations and regions. You don’t stop genocidal regimes with goodwill gestures and negotiation tables. You stop them by standing up.”
Ergo, that’s why the video clip above hits home for Israelis.
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The clip would certainly hit home for Ukrainians. All that’s needed is to change the flag of the girl from that of Israel to Ukraine. Josh Hoffman’s words apply to Putin precisely as they do to Khamenei. Israel and Ukraine are blowing up military installations and targets with precision in Iran and Russia respectively – while Khamenei and Putin blow up civilian targets from residential apartments to kindergartens to shopping malls to hospitals simply to mindlessly terrorize.
Both men are evil distilled and personified. Both are psychopaths, Khamenei driven insane with religious fanaticism, Putin driven insane with his psychotic ego. The latter was deftly described by Mike Ryan, replying in the Forum to a Putin-admirer.
“Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine not because he had to, but because he wanted to. Ukraine defied him. It looked West. It dared to act like a sovereign nation. And that bruised the ego of a former KGB thug clinging to the illusion of imperial grandeur.
The Maidenhead intelligence games didn’t go Moscow’s way, and the man at the top couldn’t stomach the humiliation. His pride got hit, and instead of planning the next chess move, he flipped the table.
Spy vs. spy isn’t new. It’s as old as scripture. But only in authoritarian regimes does a single man’s wounded vanity justify rolling tanks across borders. That’s not national defense. It’s a tantrum. And the cost? A million dead and wounded. Cities turned to ash. Economies upended. Lives shattered.
Why? So one man could save face. This begs the question, why was the KGB spy so humiliated when he lost a round to the black man, Barak Obama?
This is institutional solipsism when the apparatus of the state wraps itself around the emotional fragility of its ruler. When national strategy is indistinguishable from one man’s mirror image. It’s not only immoral. It’s laughable. The machinery of a nation twisted into a therapy session for a declining autocrat.
Putin didn’t just fail the Russian people. He exposed the inherent rot in authoritarian power: when there are no checks, no balances, and no truth-tellers left, the only strategy that remains is delusion.”
On June 12, British and US military intelligence released an assessment that More Than One Million Russian Military Personnel Have Been Killed Or Wounded In Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine. What kind of country, what kind of people can tolerate such astronomical slaughter of themselves by their leader?
The kind of people who will stand in interminable long lines to view the waxy corpse of Russia’s Hitler, Vladimir Lenin. This was taken on June 6:
Russians line up to look at Lenin’s corpse on the Red Square in Moscow. pic.twitter.com/vV6wUJ6lCv
— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) June 6, 2025
A people like this, a country like this, has no future. Just like the page in the Historical Atlas has turned on the Soviet Union, for it no longer exists, so the page is soon to turn on Russia, the centrifugal forces within it splitting it apart with only a vastly shrunken remnant remaining.
Meanwhile, Putin and his ilk are up against a people far smarter, more determined, and more advanced than them. On June 1st, Ukraine delivered a masterclass in exploiting physics, technology, and tactical innovation to obliterate four separate heavily defended Russian military airbases simultaneously. Here it is, entertainingly explained in fascinating detail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl2V9WhcL9o
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Remember this – uncountable hordes flooding unimpeded across our open southern border? That’s so yesterday. Today we have a Trump Triumph:
Remember this – uncountable hordes flooding unimpeded across our open southern border? That’s so yesterday. Today we have a Trump Triumph:
The Fox interview of Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks on how POTUS closed our border to illegals is inspiring – and truly good news.
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Another Trump Triumph came on Wednesday (6/18). The NY Post headline: Supreme Court Upholds Tennessee Ban On Transgender Treatment For Minors. Note the difference in the CBS headline: Supreme Court Upholds Tennessee Law Restricting Gender-Affirming Care For Transgender Minors.
“Gender-affirming care”??? How about child-mutilation, you woketards. SCOTUS now has all the wokies’ undies in a gender-confused twist: Trans Group: SCOTUS Decision To Uphold Ban On Sex-Change Procedures For Tennessee Minors A ‘Dangerous Setback’. Sure is – a setback for cultural and moral insanity.
The case is US v Skirmetti. It’s a landmark not just for freeing states to ban woke child abuse, but abolishing the authority of woke “experts” claiming “consensus” to override the legislators who passed a given law in the first place. The Federalist explains: In Landmark Skrmetti Case, Justice Thomas Demolishes The ‘Expert Class.’
Also on Wednesday: Supreme Court Deals Blow To Deep State Control In Ruling Against EPA. The EPA tried to pull a fast one and failed. Cool…
“The U.S. Supreme Court took a major step in helping dismantle the federal government’s stranglehold on public policy on Wednesday. In an 8-0 decision, the court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could not defend itself against a lawsuit from Oklahoma and Utah in its rubber-stamp home court, the D.C. Circuit.”
Lower courts, too, have started living in Reason City: US Court Lets Trump Keep Control Of California National Guard. POTUS was pleased.
Okay – but frankly, the Anti-ICE riots are rapidly getting out control and can only be stopped with a hammer. Try this. On Wednesday night: Portland: Rioters Target Federal Officers with Fireworks, Explosives.
“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shared video of the assault from rioters opposed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.
‘Last night, Portland rioters violently targeted federal law enforcement— 250 rioters launched fireworks, shined lasers in officers’ eyes to temporarily blind them, and stormed an ICE field office,’ said the DHS. ‘Ultimately, five individuals were arrested on various charges including assault on federal law enforcement.’
‘We won’t sit idly by and watch these cowards. Our officers are facing a 413% increase in assaults against them as they put their lives on the line to arrest murderers, rapists, and gang members,’ it added. ‘Secretary Noem’s message to the rioters is clear: you will not stop us or slow us down. ICE and our federal law enforcement partners will continue to enforce the law. And if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law’.”
Sorry – but arresting 5 out of 250 violent rioters doesn’t remotely begin to cut it. This is pathetic. Come on, Kristi. The only way to stop this is to beat the crap out of the rioters and throw them in solitary. En masse, not 2% of them.
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So – this has been a half-full report, meaning also half-empty. Then again, maybe more full than not. Trump is a transactional guy, always seeking a solution via a deal with whom he can transact. At some point, perhaps soon, he’ll realize that opponents like Putin and Khamenei are psychopaths with whom no deal is possible. We have to win, they have to lose. I believe he’ll come to this realization, and when he does, he’ll act without hesitation.
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