Good morning, and welcome to Wednesday, March 18, 2026. For those who were worried, I marked myself as being safe from falling space debris, that whole bit about “May I get struck down if I’m lying” notwithstanding. I still remember a sign over my desk, back in the day, that read, “Skylab Landing Zone.” (Ya hadda be there.)
Today in History: If you thought the current tussles in the British Monarchy are wild, consider back in AD 978, when Edward the Martyr was murdered, presumably arranged by his stepmother, Queen Ælfthryth. Is politics a blood sport? Nah.
1314: Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake by King Philip IV of France.
1766: Britain repeals the Stamp Act, which had caused outrage in colonial America and helped lead to the American Revolution.
1834: The first railroad tunnel in the U.S. is completed in Pennsylvania (275 m. / 902 ft. long).
1850: Henry Wells & William Fargo form American Express in Buffalo
1877: US President Rutherford B. Hayes (R-OH) appoints Frederick Douglass marshal of Washington, D.C.
1881: Barnum & Bailey Circus, traveling as “The Greatest Show on Earth,” debuts at Madison Square Garden in New York City after the merger of two existing circus groups.
1891: Britain is linked to the continent by telephone.
1902: Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso becomes the first well-known performer to make a record and becomes the first million seller.
1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9102, creating the War Relocation Authority, charged with overseeing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
1959: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Hawaii statehood bill.
1965: A truck loses control on Moosic Street in Scranton, Pa., killing the driver. This accident later inspired the 1974 Harry Chapin song, “30,000 Pounds of Bananas.”
1968: Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve.
1986: The U.S. Treasury Department announces plans to alter paper money.
Birthdays today include: President Grover Cleveland; inventor Rudolph Diesel; British PM Neville Chamberlain; Edward Everett Horton (American vaudeville, stage, silent and sound screen character actor [Top Hat], and narrator [“Fractured Fairy Tales” on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show]); actor Robert Donat; winemaker Ernest Gallo; motor sport great Andy Granatelli; actor Peter Graves; journalist George Plimpton; record producer “Bones” Howe; racer Mark Donohue; singer Charlie Pride; singer Wilson Pickett; singer/songwriter Dennis Linde (“Under the Eye”, Elvis’s “Burning Love”), The Alan Parsons Project’s Eric Woolfson; Outlaws bassist Frank O’Keefe; Doobie Bros drummer John Hartman; and singers Irene Cara and Vanessa Williams.
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Sorry about this, but as a writer, sometimes I just have to let the snark take over. This is one such occasion.
I was sitting around last night with my after-dinner coffee, poring over news reports from the Middle East and, of course, from the swamp known as Washington, D.C. Not exactly a digestion aid, but needed for what I do here at PJ Media. I had the Salem Media channel open and running on the big screen as well, which helps me stay on top of events.
As I sat there, I began wondering, as I have so often of late, why the Democrats can’t bring themselves to understand why letting Iran have nuclear weapons is a bad idea.
They still don’t understand that our tax dollars should never be going to funding illegals, and that only citizens should be able to vote.
They can’t understand why so many, myself included, laugh when informed that the new “leader” of the Islamic regime in Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, is a homosexual, and why we wonder when the loyal Muslims will be tossing him off a roof somewhere. And that begs another big question: When they do, will he receive as his reward 72 virgin boys? If he does, will Democrats approve?
Then I remembered that we’re talking about a group of people who can’t decide what a woman is, and it all started making a strange kind of sense. These people claim Trump is a pedophile and yet support Muslim immigrants who marry ten-year-old girls. They fear making the world a safer place and giving America any advantage, because that would be seen as supporting Trump.
These are the same people who were teed off at the unvaccinated and yet have no anger at all for the people who actually and illegally created COVID-19, which has resulted in no jail time for any of those responsible.
Then there’s AOC, who has just recently been made aware that Daylight Savings is NOT a bank. (Yeah, OK, OK, I made that one up. )
The conclusion is, however, that rational thought is well beyond such people.
That conclusion, however, raises some questions of its own. For example, why do we even let such people run our governments? Why does anyone take their campaign promises seriously?
I’ve got to stop letting the news reports dominate my after-dinner routine. Maybe it’s time I spent more effort on the question of what in the world I should do with a new, never-opened Hayes 9600 baud modem on my parts shelf. It’s not as likely to drive me totally over the edge.
Thought of the day: People say, ‘But, Betty, Facebook is a great way to connect with old friends.’ Well, at my age, if I want to connect with old friends, I need a Ouija board.” —Betty White
I’ll see you tomorrow. Take care.
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