Good morning, my friends, and welcome to Thursday, March 12, 2026. Lots of storm damage to the west and south of me, caused by tornadoes incidental to the storm front that went through over the last couple of days. Sadly, at least 10 are dead, and several dozen are injured. Some 140,000 were without power at the peak of the event. Here at the Florack Shack, we had 71 degrees, rain, and wind yesterday. Today, snow flurries. Sure seems like a Western New York spring.
1455: First record of Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible, a letter dated this day by Enea Silvio Piccolomini refers to the Bible printed a year earlier
1755: The first steam engine in America is installed to pump water from a mine.
1849: The first gold seekers arrive in Nicaragua, en route to California.
1894: Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time in a candy store in Vicksburg, Miss.
1933: Franklin D. Roosevelt conducts his first “fireside chat.”
1957: Random House and Houghton-Mifflin co-publish The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
1969: 11th Grammy Awards: “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” by Glen Campbell wins best record.
1971: The Allman Brothers Band records Live at Fillmore East on this date and the following day.
2002: The animated film Ice Age premieres.
Birthdays today Include: Clement Studebaker (founder of what became Studebaker Motors); Charles Boycott (Irish estate manager whose workers refused to work for him amid Irish rent and land issues, the origin of the term “boycott”); George W. Mason (American industrialist and CEO of the Kelvinator Corporation); novelist Jack Kerouac; singer Al Jarreau; actress Liza Minnelli; politician Mitt Romney; singer James Taylor; Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris; baseballer Darryl Strawberry; journalist Jake Tapper; and NASCAR’s Casey Mears. If today is your day, a salute from here.
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Midweeks tend to be a time, barring major events, when I sit and try to analyze the larger picture surrounding recent events. Yesterday proved no different.
The question I’ve been trying to work out is this: Why are Democrats not cheering for the downfall of the thuggish, despotic Islamic Republic? You might think anyone with any degree of decency would be, but no.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been turning this question over in my mind. And over. And over again. I’m annoyed, as is usual with such people, but in this case, there are a number of things in the positions they’ve been taking on Epic Fury that contradict their claims. I’ve been trying to get my mental arms around this point, but it’s not working.
Why are the only ones who are angry about our taking out the leadership and the military of the Islamic Republic the Democrats, here in the United States, and leftists in places like the UK and Western Europe? Certainly, Vladimir Putin isn’t cheering, nor is Chairman Xi. The indecision that British PM Kier Starmer has shown us tells me he’s got no clear vision himself about any of those, but is allowing himself to be driven by people who owe their government jobs to fealty to Islam.
I wish I could say that it’s odd to see American citizens and these other monsters coming down on the same side of an issue. Thing is, I can’t say anything of the sort. That sharing of positions has been all too common, in my lifetime at least. Take, as an example, the ease with which one can determine who someone will be voting for based on their having or not having an American flag positioned prominently on their house or apartment. (Thus, my choice for the masthead graphic).
I’m starting to believe that the one thing that Democrats share with hostile foreign leaders, the one concern that drives them, is not the loss of the mullahs in Iran. Certainly, there is no soft spot for Muslims in the Kremlin, nor in the amusingly named Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Each has spent many years trying to tamp down their own Muslim populations, often with bloody results.
At which point, we return to the question of the Democrats. I’ve actually posed in social media posts the questions of what bothers them about Epic Fury and why their objection to it. Most of the up-front answers amount to complaining that Trump didn’t get the approval of Congress, and he didn’t get a formal declaration of war from that body. Yet, these same people raising this complaint held their stony silence when Barack Obama engaged in no less than five unauthorized military actions, in places like Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. In any event, Congress hasn’t declared war since 1942. Clearly, the objection from those people is something other than the stated.
Another story that parallels this is the questions being raised about the Dept. of War supposedly buying steak and lobster for the Troops:
🚨Cracked it: I knew something was off about the fake outrage over the steak and lobster, because those are standard meals the troops get weekly at the DFAC.
I did a little digging. It seems the two vendors who had a monopoly on DOD food supply lost their contracts: VAL-PRO,… https://t.co/rhRRTNK6ED pic.twitter.com/5LjL53o4Jf
— Alladdin (@Alladdin1983) March 12, 2026
Leaving aside my stated desire to get government spending under control, and also leaving aside the idea that for years and years, our tax money has been paying for cell phones and EBT cards for migrants, fake day cares and medical centers, and settlements of sexual harrassment suits for members of Congress (which they voted against revealing the other day), the left hasn’t said a word until money supposedly went to our troops. We can afford all that and yet cannot find it in ourselves to provide a decent dinner to our folks in uniform? That says quite a bit, doesn’t it?
And anyway, it turns out that the source of these items lost its contract some time ago, which makes the whole thing just another hoax the left has used as a cudgel. (A nod to Stephen Green posting at Instapundit for that tidbit.)
In truth, I’ve essentially given up trying to talk to leftist cheerleaders who hold such positions, because as Dr. Thomas Sowell famously said, “It is usually futile to try and talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.”
I suspect that, as much as they might or might not approve of Iran being brought to heel (perhaps more correctly being crushed under it), it seems their central issue is that they just aren’t happy about Donald Trump and the United States being the ones doing it. In other words, their entire position is based on what is, to them, one sacrosanct line: Orange Man Bad. It’s not out of bounds to conclude that all these people do not want America to succeed. That’s why they’re not cheering. It looks from here like their party loyalty is stronger than their loyalty to country. Why their party is apparently engaged in suicidal tendencies is beyond me, for the moment. Do they really expect America to continue as such if they get their way and their politics into policy? I doubt it.
Along the same lines, another thought occurred to me last night, and it is connected in a strange way to my initial question: I wonder if the heavy crackdown on illegal aliens over the last several months was in preparation for Epic Fury?
Consider it: If Iran’s threat about sleeper cells were anything like accurate (and who else would they be sending messages to on that numbers station I wrote of the other day ), might the intent of removing foreign nationals have been partly an effort to get rid of these cells? I admit this is no more than suspicion, but if my suspicion is correct, that would amount to more 3D chess from Trump. I’d like to think I have an analytical mind, but that level of planning is outside my wheelhouse, I’m afraid. That idea, if true, would also nicely explain the Democrat reaction to ICE and its enforcement of laws that, ironically, the leftist Democrats helped to write.
It’s not just that the left depends on illegal voters, but also that their friends in places like Moscow, Bejing and Tehran would find their ability to extend power inside our proverbial walls limited, even canceled. The people pulling the strings on the left certainly wouldn’t accept that limitation, and they would use every tool they could against it, including what Mona Charen once called “the useful idiots” here at home.
I guess the real question that filters out of all this is, Whose side are the Democrats on, anyway? The answer, whatever else it comes down to, is clearly not the United States of America. That should give every one of us pause.
Related: So, What Now for Iran?
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