Hi there, and happy Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. Day two on the road today. I'll be home tonight. Home stretch today, and I've never been so glad to see the end of an interstate. Should be home in time to check out the Bills game.
My calendar says it's Alaska Day, Chocolate Cupcake Day, Exascale Day, No Beard Day, and the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist. So shave, grab a cupcake, and calculate a quintillion different ways the czar regrets that real estate deal.
Today in History:
1648: Boston shoemakers form the first labor organization in the colonies.
1685: King Louis XIV revokes the Edict of Nantes, stripping French Protestants of their religious freedom.
1767: Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon wrap up the survey that gives the Mason-Dixon Line its name, a line I'll be driving over in a few hours.
1867: Russia hands Alaska over to the United States in a flag-lowering ceremony at Sitka.
1892: Alexander Graham Bell places the first call on the new long-distance line linking New York and Chicago.
1898: The United States takes formal control of Puerto Rico from Spain.
1922: A group of radio manufacturers forms the British Broadcasting Company.
1931: Thomas Edison dies at 84 in West Orange, N.J.
1954: Texas Instruments announces the Regency TR-1, the first commercial transistor radio.
1962: The Nobel committee awards James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins the prize in medicine for mapping the structure of DNA.
1963: France launches Félicette, the first cat to reach space.
1968: Olympic officials suspend sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos for their raised-fist salute on the medal stand in Mexico City.
1972: Congress passes the Clean Water Act over President Richard Nixon's veto.
1977: Reggie Jackson belts three home runs on three straight swings in Game 6, clinching the World Series for the Yankees and cementing his "Mr. October" nickname.
1989: NASA launches the Galileo probe toward Jupiter aboard the space shuttle Atlantis.
Birthdays Today include: Mike Ditka, Hall of Fame tight end and Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears coach. He passed a few days ago. Pam Dawber, actress (Mork & Mindy, My Sister Sam); Martina Navratilova, tennis champion (18 Grand Slam singles titles); Jean-Claude Van Damme, actor (Bloodsport, Timecop); Wynton Marsalis, trumpeter and composer (Blood on the Fields); Ne-Yo, singer ("So Sick," "Miss Independent"); Lindsey Vonn, Olympic gold medalist alpine skier; Freida Pinto, actress (Slumdog Millionaire); Zac Efron, actor (High School Musical, The Greatest Showman); Tyler Posey, actor (Teen Wolf).
If today's your birthday too, happy birthday. Skip the beard, keep the cupcake.
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Long drives like this tend to cause one to focus on particular events on that drive.
Yesterday's journey was no exception. Well, I had two such happenings. The first was a stop at Buc-ees, which I'd never been to before. The place was a madhouse. Great beef jerky, and probably the largest selection I've ever seen. Predictable, but fun.
The second was a bit more unpredictable. I won't say where, but I ran across yet another gaggle of "No Kings" idiots lining the shoulder of a major highway. What made the whole thing comical was the guy in the clown suit, about a half mile back, carrying a sign that read "Caution: Stupid People Ahead." I tell you, it made my morning.
Here's the thing. That clown was the most honest participant in the whole production. He knew he was wearing a costume. He owned it. The folks up the road with the hand-lettered signs decidedly did not.
I've watched these gatherings of useful idiots roll across the country for well over a year now. I’ve even written about it a time or two. Yesterday marked round four. Indivisible, MoveOn, and the 50501 Movement kicked this off on Donald Trump's birthday in June 2025, then returned in October, again in March, and again this weekend. And this time the organizers decided to drop the pretense. According to coverage of the planning, they billed the October 17 events as nonpartisan voter-participation activities rather than protests.
Nonpartisan? Yeah, right. About two weeks before a midterm. Organized by MoveOn. Yeah, I don’t think so. A movement built from the ground up to oppose one Republican president, run by groups that exist to elect Democrats, now wants you to believe its Saturday highway rallies serve civic hygiene. That's not a protest anymore. That's a get-out-the-vote operation wearing a protest costume, and it fits about as well as the clown's polka dots.
Then there's the name itself: "No Kings." Organizers say the country doesn't belong to kings, dictators, or tyrants. Fine. I agree. So does every conservative I know, and so did the Founders, who handled the actual king business in 1776. But a king doesn't face voters. A king doesn't stand for midterms. A king doesn't watch courts block his executive orders week after week, or answer to a Congress that can defund him, or leave office on a date fixed in the Constitution. This president does all of those things.
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The people on that highway shoulder know this, or at least the ones running the show do. Even if you're dressed in a turnip suit like a contestant on The Price Is Right, you can't simultaneously claim we live under a monarch and organize a voter drive to throw out his party in November. Pick one. Either the elections mean something, in which case "No Kings" is hysteria, or they don't, in which case why bother with the voter drive?
They won't pick, because the slogan was never about kings. It's about branding. Somebody in a consulting shop figured out that "No Kings" tests better than "We lost in 2024 and we're still having a tantrum" and that a nice patriotic-sounding phrase gives cover to people who otherwise spend their time explaining why the Constitution is outdated.
I think what we're seeing here is evidence that the left has already taken its shot. It is desperately trying to be relevant in a world that not only doesn't see any relevance in its cause, but sees it in a negative light. Even the leftist fishwrappers have started to admit that the Democrats are not doing so well, after all. But these protesters act as if they know none of it. They keep going on with this nonsense because it's all they have left. They keep the chants going because that's the only arrow still in the quiver.
The organizers love to brag about numbers. After last October's round, they claimed that more than 7 million people showed up at 2,700-plus events, and boasted that the turnout dwarfed both of Trump's inaugurations combined. Maybe. Crowd counts from the people selling the crowd deserve the same skepticism you'd give a used-car lot's "best prices in town" banner. But grant them the number. Seven million people standing on curbs and highway shoulders in a nation of 340 million is still a rounding error. And it still loses to the 77 million who walked into a voting booth and made the choice the No Kings crowd keeps trying to relitigate on Saturdays.
Now, that clown suit guy? I’ll give him credit. He didn't block anybody. He didn't claim to save democracy. He walked a half mile back from the main event, held up a sign, and warned the rest of us about what lay ahead. Public service, plain and simple. The No Kings people spent their Saturday telling America it lives under a tyrant. The clown spent his time telling America the truth.
I know which one I'd vote for.
= = =
Thought for the Day: A man who knows he's wearing a costume will always outthink a crowd that doesn't.
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Take care, gang. Glad you came by today. Let's do this again tomorrow.
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