Hello, and a warm welcome to you on this Thursday, June 18, 2026. A lot of fun listings in the observances today: It's National Go Fishing Day, National Wanna Get Away Day, and National Cheesemaker's Day. (How did Monty Python put it? Blessed are the CheeseMakers?)
1682: English Quaker William Penn founds Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania Colony.
1812: The War of 1812 begins when the U.S. declares war against Britain.
1815: Battle of Waterloo: Napoleon Bonaparte and France are defeated by British forces under the Duke of Wellington and Prussian troops under Field Marshal von Blücher.
1822: Part of the US-Canadian boundary is determined.
1879: W. H. Richardson, an African-American inventor, patents the children's carriage (Patent no. 405599).
1940: General Charles de Gaulle makes his first speech to the French people, since arriving in London, on the BBC — an appeal to defy Nazi occupiers, regarded as the beginning of French Resistance during WWII.
1940: Winston Churchill gives his "This was their finest hour" speech to the House of Commons, urging perseverance in the war after the Dunkirk evacuation and the fall of France.
1961: CBS radio cancels Gunsmoke, after a nine-year run. Show moves to TV.
1982: ABC's All Talk radio network expands to 22 stations.
Birthdays today include: William Henry Seward Jr, banker and Brigadier General (Union Army); Edward Wyllis Scripps, publisher who organized the first major U.S. chain of newspapers; Henry Clay Folger, CEO of Standard Oil and founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library; "Kay" Kyser, bandleader and radio personality (Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge); Bud Collyer, TV emcee (Beat the Clock, To Tell the Truth); Robert Mondavi, winemaker pioneer and entrepreneur; Sammy Cahn, lyricist ("Three Coins in a Fountain," "High Hopes," "Call Me Irresponsible"); Richard Boone, actor (Big Jake, Have Gun Will Travel); Tommy Hunt, soul singer (Flamingos, 1956-60 - "I Only Have Eyes For You"); Paul McCartney (yes, that Paul McCartney); and Richard Perry, record producer (Harry Nilsson, Ringo Starr, Carly Simon, Leo Sayer, The Pointer Sisters), founded Planet Records.
If today's your birthday too, have a great day!
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Hang onto your seats, kids. This may shock you. The same Never Trump GOP dead-enders who've been slow-walking the SAVE America Act are also the loudest voices shrieking about the Iran deal — before they've read a single page of it. I’ll bet I'm not alone in noticing this, and pretending otherwise just lets these people off the hook.
Democracy Docket says, about the SAVE America Act:
Four Senate Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — joined every Democrat to block the amendment.
Funny how those names keep showing up, isn't it?
Now let’s look at the Iran deal critics and see if there's a discernible pattern.
MS-NOW, sounding positively giddy, reports that Sen. Tillis declared the deal falls short — complaining he needs "more than 14 bullet points" and that anyone "gushing over it being a great plan" lacks sufficient information. The irony apparently escaped Tillis entirely: He also lacked sufficient information, and that didn't slow his mouth down for one single second. Those details develop over the next 60 days, Thom. Maybe you should be waiting for them before spouting, eh?
Sen. Murkowski, meanwhile, demanded a "corresponding win" for the U.S. and insisted the Trump administration parade the deal before lawmakers "with an opportunity for us to actually ask those questions." Yes, Lisa, that process exists. It's called the 60-day review period you apparently haven't heard of. You need to do a better job at keeping up.
Military.com reminds us that before we even got to this stage, Collins, Murkowski, and Sen Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — joined by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — voted for a war powers resolution to kneecap Trump's Iran military authority. Cassidy went furthest, calling the deal "the worst foreign policy blunder in decades" and claiming "Iran's nuclear ambitions were not curbed." Either Cassidy has access to classified information that the rest of us don't, or he's constructing his outrage entirely from imagination or political gamesmanship. Given the pattern, one of those options seems considerably more likely than the other. Guess which one.
Dig into the vote histories, and the picture gets uglier. In the run-up to the 2016 election, a cluster of these Never Trumpers — Susan Collins, Tom Cotton, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul — voted to fund Planned Parenthood. A pattern? It sure looks like one.
These people mount a coordinated effort to strangle Trump's successes and the agenda the American people voted for at every turn. The question worth asking is simple: Is this Trump butthurt, or is there a coherent principle hiding somewhere in this wreckage? Because if you call yourself a conservative, and yet you burn with inexplicable emotional investment in undermining the one politician who has moved the conservative ball further down the field than anyone since Reagan, your principles aren't just ill-defined. They're a fiction. A convenient one, maybe, but a fiction nonetheless.
Related: The Orange Man Bad Death Spiral: Insanity Defined
And while we're at it, let's recall that the Establishment GOP despised Reagan, too. They've spent forty-plus years trying to make us forget everything he demonstrated was possible, and now they've found a new target.
So, yes: Collins, Murkowski, Tillis, McConnell, and Cassidy form a consistent bloc — the perpetual friction machine on both domestic legislation and foreign policy. What they dress up as “principled independence” is, in fact, selective obstruction, and every time they pull this move, Democrats pop champagne. These senators cloak their resistance in the language of institutional norms — the filibuster, congressional war powers, treaty oversight — but what that really means is that the same small band of establishment Never-Trumper Republicans keeps burning down the agenda the voters who elected them explicitly demanded they advance.
Call it what you want. Democrats certainly know what to call it. They call it their own victory against Orange Man Bad.
Thought of the Day: Sarcasm is the art of insulting people without them recognizing it.
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Take care today. Try not to replace me with someone better looking before tomorrow. I'll see you then.
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