HALF-FULL REPORT 07/04/25
Welcome to the Fourth of July HFR! And WOW! What an abundantly Happy 4th it is for all normal patriotic Americans.
As the NY Post expresses it this morning (7/04):
Before we go further, however, I want to suggest that you take a moment to read Freedom’s Birthday up on TTP today. That will start our celebration properly.
OK – let the HFR fireworks begin!
POPEYE’S VILLAGE
Ever see the 1980 movie Popeye starring Robin Williams? It takes place in the seaside town of Sweethaven – and you’re looking at it. The film set was built in a cove on the northern end of the island of Malta in the Mediterranean just for the movie.
It’s now been transformed into a Disney-type fun park for kids and families. Not what you expect to find in an island famous for ancient temples older than the pyramids, massive medieval fortresses that were scenes of battles that saved Western Civilization, magnificently ornate Renaissance cathedrals, gorgeous beaches and breathtaking scenery. But here it is, with shows, rides, and play houses filled with children laughing and exploring. One more reason to love Malta. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #147 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FOR ALL THE MARBLES
[This edition of Deuces Wild is worthy of your careful reading and reflection. Remember that TTPer Deuce is an on -duty on-the-street cop who brings street-smart reality to the Left’s goals for our country. Where else can you get this except on TTP? –JW]
So much has been happening since we last Deuced that it was hard for me to decide just how to write about the events.
As we go to press, the situation in California makes it very clear that Trump was absolutely right to engage in plans to deport illegal aliens en masse.
The human rats are coming out of the woodwork quickly, and showing us what they really stand for—and that is the destruction of our rule of law.
Time will tell if the national ship can finally be righted without us going into what I will call “kinetic territory.”
That could be its own large discussion topic—but for the events dominating the Middle East.
Israel finally attacked Iran and their nuclear program; decimating great swaths of their nuclear facilities and leadership, as well as the Iranian Waffen SS—the Republican Guard.
The icing on the cake was the U.S. buying in and helping Israel burn Iran’s nuclear project to the ground with some B-2s and some special bombs that were built particularly for that scenario.
We can rest assured that if the twerking, giggling mental case Kamala had been elected, Israel would have been on its own and nuclear weapons might have indeed had to have been used before the radioactive dust settled.
TRUMP’S BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL AND ITS PERMANENT TAX CUT WILL CHANGE THE WORLD
[I’ve known Grover for over 40 years. In all those years, the dream of his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, is what this bill makes possible. We’ll be talking about this more in tomorrow’s HFR. Read Grover now for a head start. – JW]
President Donald Trump’s permanent tax cut will change the world.
The "big, beautiful bill" is the capstone of years of work to create a pro-growth tax policy that will make the American economy so strong we will leave Europe in the dust and convince China they cannot compete with us militarily or economically.
The big bill provides lower tax rates for all. Permanent, immediate expensing of business investment. Tax simplification. America competing in the world economy with lower taxes, not lower wages.
And the largest spending cut of any budget resolution in history.
The importance of permanent 100% business expensing cannot be overstated. This is an achievement pursued by the taxpayer movement for the past five decades.
THE TEMPLE OF ULU WATU
Built 1,000 years ago on the edge of a cliff hundreds of feet above the sea on the island of Bali, the sacred temple of Ulu Watu is one of the holiest places of worship for the Balinese people. They have retained their unique form of Balinese Hinduism for millennia that incorporates their original animism, ancestor worship, and reverence for Buddhist saints or Bodhisattva. This has resulted in a spiritual warmth and gentle friendliness matched by few other places on earth. It is little wonder so many who come here consider Bali to be a worldly paradise. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #108 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE FREEDOM TO MAKE INFORMED HEALTH CHOICES
It’s hard to believe that the constitutional right to make your own informed decisions about nutrients was wrested from the FDA regulators only twenty-five years ago!
And our own Skye, Durk Pearson, made that happen with a lawsuit that had to go to appellate court before it was finally decided in 1999.
“The safe harbor from "drug" status for dietary supplements bearing FDA-approved health claims did not always exist. Prior to 1984, the FDA took the position that a statement that consumption of a food could prevent a particular disease was "tantamount to a claim that the food was a drug . . . and therefore that its sale was prohibited until a new drug application had been approved." Appeal No. 98-5043
Durk and Sandy were pioneers in anti-aging science—but they were also warriors for truth and free speech. In 1993 they wrote Freedom of Informed Choice: FDA vs. Nutritional Supplements, a powerful book that shook the foundations of how the FDA regulates supplements.They exposed how the FDA was blocking truthful information about nutritional supplements from reaching the public and they argued that Americans have a constitutional right to hear the truth about nutrients—even if the FDA didn’t approve of the message.
THE SOURCE OF BIAS
There are biases in our thinking that can lead to big mistakes in our decision making, including expensive mistakes with our money and investments, poor choices at work, and huge misunderstandings between people.
In the past I’ve written about Daniel Kahneman’s description of fast and slow thinking as a way of understanding and minimizing the effects of these biases. Today I want to talk about why we have these biases in the first place.
Is it because we’re flawed? Is there something wrong with us? Are we just a bunch of numbskulls that don’t know how to use our brains?
No, that’s not it. There’s nothing wrong with us. Our biases are part of an effective and healthy brain, and normal human functioning.
It’s more accurate to say that our lives involve challenges that can sometimes overwhelm what we’re capable of. And yet we still function exceptionally well, most of the time.
THE PILLARS OF HERCULES
On either side of the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar there are two small mountains known since great antiquity as the Pillars of Hercules. The pillar on the northern, European side is the famous Rock of Gibraltar. That on the southern, African side is Mount Abyla, Phoenician for “lofty mountain.”
The legend for the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans was that Hercules pushed the two pillars apart to join the Mediterranean with the Atlantic. We think today of Hercules as a comic-book bodybuilder, while the truth is opposite. The entire ancient Mediterranean world very seriously worshipped him. For the Phoenicians, he was Melqart, King of the Earth. For the Greeks, he was Heracles, Divine Protector of Mankind. He was the same for the Romans, who pronounced his name as Hercules.
The Phoenician trading port of Abyla has a history of 3,000 years, from Phoenician to Carthaginian to Roman to Byzantine to Christian Visigoths to Islamic Berbers to Portuguese – and since 1668 to Spain, which continues to govern it today as the Spanish Autonomous City of Ceuta on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.
Ceuta is a charming European city with beautiful beaches, open air cafés with great sangria, very relaxed and pleasant. It is here you find the statue of Hercules separating his Pillars commemorating the legend pictured above. Easy to get to with high-speed ferries from Algeciras near Gibraltar, Ceuta is definitely worth your while to experience. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #137 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
MICHELLE OBAMA CALLS GIVING BIRTH THE LEAST SIGNIFICANT THING A WOMAN CAN DO
Another Democrat former first lady is taking her contempt for children way beyond her distaste for baking cookies.
It might explain why the Obama children never looked very happy, and why young Malia Obama no longer wants to use her mom and dad's last name in the career she is trying to build in film.
But more broadly, it highlights the moral disorder seen among Democrat opinionmakers. To downgrade motherhood, the one thing only women can do to perpetrate the human race, is an outrageous take on the vital role of women and the role they play most naturally.
It's like a war against human civilization, obvious enough in that thoughtless yet deeply felt opinion of Michelle Obama, a remark bound to be met by approval by Democrats who will clap like seals at its mention.
RUSSIA IS JUST NOT VERY GOOD AT FIGHTING WARS
One of the 10,000 Russian tanks destroyed in Ukraine
Last month (6/25), Russian casualties climbed through the one million mark after three and a half years of Putin’s “special military operation”, originally expected to last three days.
For an army of such size in manpower and equipment this seems a remarkable price to pay for less than a fifth of Ukrainian territory, fighting against an army which was minuscule in comparison on the day of the illegal invasion – 24th Feb 22.
What are the reasons for this ineptitude, and is this purely a problem of the modern Russian army – or a reflection of systemic failures across the centuries? A soldier (Hamish) and a historian (James) will try to answer these questions today.
When it comes down to it, the Russian military has always relied on mass and brutality. It has aspired historically to ambitious intellectual underpinnings for its military power but this has tended to falter on first contact with reality.
Which leads to Ukraine.