LETHAL BEAUTY
Want to get this close to a leopard – and safely? Come with me on a safari in Africa and I’ll show you how. Yes, she’s lethal – to the animals she hunts, not you. Yes, you can make such lethal beauty an indelible part of your life.
We really do only live once on this Earth. You really do owe it to yourself to make the most of it. You really can’t take it with you. It really is time to live your dream, to fill your soul with life-memorable experiences. Life lasts but a snap of the finger.
So what adventures have you always dreamed of? Let me know and maybe you and I can make them become real together. I’m only an email away: [email protected]. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #204 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
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)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY FINDING THE BEST WITHIN US
Nevil Shute (1899-1960) was my mom’s favorite author. He mirrored her sense of optimism and perseverance, so for me they are a kind of time capsule, with an emotional quality and a spirit of life that I learned, in part, from her.
If you have never read him, you’re in for a treat. Not just because they’re great stories; I recommend them for the sense of life they convey.
Nevil Shute’s stories are about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Crises have the effect of forcing us to do things that we would otherwise not have done – for better or worse. We can have talents, strengths, and abilities that lie dormant unless and until we are challenged with an unavoidable problem to solve.
We all need this message in the troubling times all of us are facing today.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: EXPLAINING THE WORLD WITH A SHRUNKEN HEAD
Back in 2007, I gave a talk to a small group of conservatives in Washington DC. It was recorded by C-Span. I hope you find it informative and entertaining. My talk lasted 26 minutes, the rest is Q&A, during which I was asked good questions. Enjoy!
WHITE HOUSE LIT UP WITH SYMBOL OF RELIGIOUS CULT
WASHINGTON, DC — The White House was lit up with the colors of a fanatical cult this week, officially signaling the Biden Administration's establishment of a new state-sponsored religion: Same-Sex and Tranny Worship. The move has received both widespread applause and serious concerns about the First Amendment implications.
Mainstream media sources hailed the move as a significant victory in the crusade for inclusivity and acceptance of all people, except for anyone who disagrees, in which case dissidents should be removed from society. Critics, however, questioned whether the adoption of an official national religion violates the First Amendment.
"Establishing a religion in no way violates the Constitution's mandate that the government not establish a religion," said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. "Any questions regarding this issue will be considered bigoted, racist, and other horrible things I can't think of right now."
At publishing time, the Biden administration was believed to be in discussions to require all churches in the country to follow suit and be lit up with the same colors in a show of solidarity with the new State Religion. Babylon Bee reporting.
HALF-FULL REPORT 12/16/22
Commie scumbag John Brennan, Obama’s CIA Director who was in charge of the Deep State/Twitter/Facebook et al war on Trump, Russia Hoax, Hunter Laptop suppression, and Dem theft of the 2020 presidency, ticked off the wrong guy.
Musk knows he has a lever that can move the world – that’s why he spent $44 billion buying it – and he plans to use it to kill off the Woke Mind-Virus.
There’s a lot of good news this week, like two silver linings right now. The first will make you smile, the second… a belly laugh.
There’s a Hurray! for two true American ladies you should know about this week. And one for the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. And another for a beauty queen turned deadly sniper known as her country’s Joan of Arc.
Here w go – lots to enjoy in this week’s HFR!
THE DEATH OF PAN
At the foot of Mount Hermon in northern Israel you find the Grotto of Pan, the Greek God of Nature, where pilgrims came from all over the ancient world to worship. Remnants of the huge Temple of Pan are here, together with the cave grotto where he lived when not at Olympus. The spring that gushes forth from the grotto is one of the sources of the Jordan River.
If Pan was ever disturbed, he would groan so loudly it would cause anyone who heard it to “panic” (panikos in Greek) – the origin of the term. Loudest of all was his last. The legend is that with the advent of Christianity replacing belief in the Olympian Gods, Pan died for lack of worshippers, emitting a death groan of agony from the mouth of the cave you see here so loud and terrifying it was heard throughout the Mediterranean. It’s a beautiful and peaceful place today. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #51 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 12/15/22
The Truth is Emerging
Let Freedom Ring!
So far, Elon Musk has dropped five tweets exposing the massive corruption and collusion between Twitter, government agencies, and big finance.We knew it was terrible, but it was horrible.
Every government agency had its finger in the pot while the founder, Jack Dorsey, retreated to smoke pot and found himself in a yurt.
He put a staff of the most radical, most transvestite, most anti-reality people possible in charge with the intent of changing reality from objective truth into whatever the government required.
They did this by tailoring the Twitter experience to the individual user by keeping track of past comments and reading cookies left behind from other web activity.
They made a big mistake as they boiled the frog too hard and fast, and now Musk is in control of their entire work product.
Elon Musk lost his child to the wokesters. He has an axe to grind, a dog in the fight. The consequences for the central planners look to be pretty bad.
Alberta is reasserting its rights under federalism, and North Carolina is at the Supreme Court, asserting the rights of its legislature to organize elections per the US Constitution.
Stagflation is the economic order of the day, and it will be here for a while. Over sixty percent of living Americans were not yet born during the last period of stagnation, and it was scrubbed from their school curriculum. The young will need guidance.
All in all, the news is very good for Freedom.
Join us over at Skye’s links.
WHO’S ‘WE’? “WE OWE US!” 2022
This morning’s (12/15) Daily Mail has this story:
Of course, no one on the committee asked – because they’re all ridiculous Lefties – the obvious question: “Who’s ‘we’?”
The people who worked for free as slaves lived over 160 years ago. The cammie coat guy sure doesn’t look that old, so who’s he talking about? Oh, he’s a descendant, the great-great-great-great-great-grandson (counting 25 years per generation) of someone who worked for free, so he gets to be a paid now. Right.
So here we go again. The Reparations Scam has been around so long that I wrote it up in TTP not quite 19 years ago, February 2004: We Owe Us! The Real Case for Reparations. Time to revisit and revise it. Feel quite free to send this to anyone you know who could benefit from it.
THE COMING WAR OVER HUNTER BIDEN
"Committee Republicans have spoken with multiple whistleblowers from numerous schemes involving the Biden family, reviewed Hunter Biden's laptop, and received documents of previously unknown transactions," House Oversight Committee Chairman-to-be Rep. James Comer told a news conference on Nov. 17.
"What we found are business plans aimed at targets around the world based on influence peddling, including with people closely tied to foreign governments like China and Russia." The Bidens, Comer said, "flourished and became millionaires by simply offering access to 'The Family.'"
Press coverage of the investigation will likely fall into two categories. The first will focus on traditional coverage of what the committee discovers, what witnesses tell investigators, what documents are involved, etc. The second will ignore those developments or attack the investigation itself.
After all, it’s clearly possible that what these investigations reveal could put the Big Guy in an orange jumpsuit.