Good morning! Welcome, my friends, to the new week. It’s Monday, Feb. 16, 2026. The weather around Western New York is much more livable than it's been, with highs into the 40's until Sunday. Good, this will give my heating bills a much-desired break.
1852: Studebaker Brothers wagon company established — the precursor of the automobile manufacturer.
1861: Abraham Lincoln stopped his train at Westfield, N.Y., on his way to Washington to thank 11-year-old Grace Bedell in person for her advice to grow a beard to gain more votes.
1937: DuPont Corp patents nylon.
1960: U.S. nuclear submarine USS Triton set off on an underwater round-the-world trip.
1964: Second appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.
2006: The U.S Army decommissions the last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH).
Birthdays Today include: Edgar Bergen, American ventriloquist; Richard "Dick" McDonald, co-founder of McDonald's; Otis Blackwell, American; Sonny Bono; Carl Icahn;; James Ingram, Ice-T; and John McEnroe.
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On the 4th of this month, I ran a column entitled “They Only Attack When They Sense Weakness”, wherein I argued that:
...we need also to be strong on supporting and defending the Judeo-Christian culture that — regardless of the left, Islamists, and ChiComs' disfavor — is the basis, the very foundation, of Western life, even for the not-so-religious.
The efforts to import the third world into our country by Obama and Biden, and the mobs trying to prevent us from enforcing our laws, are nothing short of an attempt to shift the culture away from the Western, Judeo-Christian culture and values that have guided us for centuries. The anti-ICE movement, including that attack on the church, is part and parcel of the attempt to keep moving our culture away from its foundation. One way to project the needed strength is the arrest and conviction of the people involved in that invasion of the church, including Don Lemon, who was reported by parishioners as leading that mob.
Projecting cultural strength is the only answer to these attacks. More than one problematic group will be contained by simply showing some backbone in this regard.
So you can imagine my enthusiastic reaction to Marco Rubio’s recent speech at the Munich Security Conference.
🚨 BOOM! MARCO RUBIO IN EUROPE: “We do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker…The alliance we want is one not paralyzed by fear of climate change, war, technology. Instead, we want an alliance that boldly races into the future!”pic.twitter.com/ZwDohIllCj
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 14, 2026
Rubio went on to say, "Mass migration is not some fringe concern of little consequence. It was and continues to be a crisis that destabilizes societies across the West."
This explains quite clearly the move to keep the number of what is euphemistically called "undocumented people" under control. Now, as for the UnAmerican left’s claims that we have lost the respect of our European Allies, for this positioning, observe their reaction to Rubio’s speech:
🚨 MASSIVE STANDING OVATION for Sec. Marco Rubio in Germany!
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) February 14, 2026
He just told Europe straight up: we must return to our Christian roots and reject the flood of 3rd-world migration destroying our societies.
Best Secretary of State in history!
pic.twitter.com/zMTuW3HsWx
Gee, sounds like they agree with what he said, doesn’t it? Well, there’s a reason for this.
This reaction by European leaders shows us the wisdom of The Art Of The Deal. Those who have read that book will understand immediately that JD Vance’s speech a year or so back constituted the gut punch, the shock treatment, if you will, and Rubio’s outstretched hand, which, after the show of power around the globe exercised to the purposes laid out here by Rubio, represents a new and more powerfully resolved friend. And European leaders, unlike their reaction to the repeated show of weakness exhibited by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, are gobbling it up, as you can see for yourself.
Our Sarah Anderson notes in her piece over the weekend a key point in Rubio's speech:
"The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life," he said. "And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny."
And I note, what is "America First" but that?
Sarah also rightly notes the points Rubio made about the United Nations, which has rendered itself useless in the last few decades. That's a subject that deserves a column of its own, but I'd be remiss if I didn't include his comments about them:
But we cannot ignore that today, on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role. It could not solve the war in Gaza. Instead, it was American leadership that freed captives from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce. It had not solved the war in Ukraine. It took American leadership and partnership with many of the countries here today just to bring the two sides to the table in search of a still-elusive peace.
It was powerless to constrain the nuclear program of radical Shia clerics in Tehran. That required 14 bombs dropped with precision from American B-2 bombers. And it was unable to address the threat to our security from a narco-terrorist dictator in Venezuela. Instead, it took American Special Forces to bring this fugitive to justice.
The attendees at the Munich conference were forced to acknowledge the truth in these words. The partnerships Donald Trump has been pursuing and Rubio has been preaching are being well received in Europe, and feared by both Iranian Mullahs and Democrats. That's a pairing the Democrats themselves have chosen. They're starting to recognize how very perilous that positioning is. The challenge now is going to be keeping those two increasingly desperate entities at bay while pursuing this more productive policy.
By the way, Sarah's piece contains a video of Rubio's entire speech, which I urge you to see for yourself.
Thought for the day: As a man in a relationship, you have a simple choice. You can either be right, or you can be happy." — Ralphie May.
Take care of yourselves, please. I hope to see you here tomorrow.
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