Hello and welcome to Tuesday, April 14, 2026. It’s also National Gardening Day, National Dolphin Day, and National Pecan Day. Must be spring, too: thunderstorms around the Florack Shack this morning.
1828: Noah Webster registers the copyright for the publication of the first American dictionary titled An American Dictionary of the English Language.
1860: The first Pony Express rider arrives in San Francisco from St. Joseph, Mo.
1865: U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and his family are attacked in their home by Lewis Powell as part of the same conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, who was shot at Ford’s Theater on the same day.
1894: First public showing of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope (moving pictures).
1902: James Cash Penney opens his first store, The Golden Rule Store, in Kemmerer, Wyo.
1912: RMS Titanic, the world’s largest ocean liner, hits an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. off Newfoundland.
1914: U.S. head of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company Stacy G. Carkhuff patents non-skid tire pattern.
1939: John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath is published.
1943: American intelligence intercepts and decrypts a JN-25 message detailing a forthcoming visit by Japanese Navy Marshal Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto to Balalae Airfield, near Bougainville in the Solomon Islands; his plane is shot down 4 days later.
1960: American record company Motown, founded by Berry Gordy, Jr., is incorporated as Motown Record Corporation in Detroit, Mich.
1983: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs $165 billion Social Security rescue.
Birthdays today include: Anne Sullivan, teacher who educated Helen Keller; Sir John Gielgud, actor (Arthur; Hamlet); Joie Chitwood, auto racer and stunt driver; Rod Steiger, actor (In the Heat of the Night; The Pawnbroker); Loretta Lynn, singer-songwriter; Frank Serpico, policeman who blew whistle on NYPD corruption; Julie Christie, actress (Dr. Zhivago); Pete Rose, baseballer; Tony Burrows, British pop singer (Edison Lighthouse, “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes”); and Ritchie Blackmore, guitar great (Deep Purple, Rainbow).
If today is also your day, here’s wishing you a good one.
***
Let’s start here, this morning:
“Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion.” — General Norman Schwarzkopf
Contextual memory is an odd thing. I literally haven’t thought of Schwarzkopf for years now, and yet, in the context of this report from Fox this morning, this quote from him was the first thing that came to mind. The link is understandable.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron is facing renewed criticism for his lack of support for President Donald Trump’s war against Iran and demands to include Lebanon in the current ceasefire as historic talks between Israel and Lebanon are set to begin Tuesday.
The historic meeting brokered by President Trump between Lebanon, a former French mandate, and Israel will take place at the ambassador level as hopes for an agreement evolve — most noticeably without French involvement. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to host both nations’ ambassadors.
The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel’s government requested that France be excluded from the talks. An Israeli official told the paper that “France’s conduct over the past year – including initiatives aimed at limiting Israel’s ability to fight in Iran, and a complete lack of willingness to take concrete steps to help Lebanon disarm Hezbollah – has led Israel to view France as an unfair mediator.”
On Monday, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem called on the Lebanese government to cancel the Tuesday meeting in Washington, while describing the talks as pointless. In a televised speech, Qassem said the armed group will continue to confront Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Hezbollah violated a ceasefire to enter the war on its patron, Iran’s side, in March, when it launched rockets into Israel after the U.S.-Israel joint attack on the Islamic Republic began. Still, Macron has demanded Israel stop attacking Hezbollah’s terror infrastructure in Lebanon.
These talks are scheduled in Washington today, so I may well have more to say about this later this week.
Meanwhile, let me be clear on this: Macron’s pitching his position as protecting the Lebanese people, but it is in fact a betrayal of Lebanon. That’s particularly troublesome, given France’s historical role in the region. Between this and the attitude involving President Trump’s actions in Iran, it is nothing short of a cowardly breaking of trust with France’s international allies.
If there’s a group that has less standing than France in the matter of Lebanon, it’s Hezbollah. And forget what the lamestream media is telling you: Macron is trying to defend Hezbollah. This has been a sticking point with the man for many years now. He has pushed the French government to try cutting the baby in half by calling Hezbollah’s “military wing” a terrorist organization while steadfastly refusing to ban its “political wing.” That insanity is rejected even by Hezbollah, which considers itself a unified movement without “branches.”
It’s no shock, then, that Macron would take this position, given that France currently harbors between five and seven million Muslims, or around 10% of its population. Most of these made the move since the French mandate, which is a mess that I’d need several days to unravel here. It does seem logical to wonder if Macron’s actions are not being driven by that 10% voting against him.
Anyway, according to the Fox report:
Edy Cohen, an Israeli security expert on Hezbollah, who was born in Lebanon, told Fox News Digital, “France is forced not to come out against Hezbollah in order to legitimize its involvement in Lebanon.”
A French diplomat told the Times of Israel that “what we are hoping for is not a ticket to the meeting, but that Israel stops its offensive on Lebanon.”
When asked if France would pressure Lebanon to recognize Israel as a state, Pascal Confavreux, a spokesman for France’s Foreign Ministry, told “Fox News Sunday” that, “Iran has to stop terrorizing Israel through Hezbollah because Hezbollah chose to bring Lebanon into a war which is not Lebanon’s war… Lebanon has to be included in the ceasefire, something that we are pushing diplomatically.” He continued that we are in favor of direct talks between Lebanon and Israel.
This ridiculous state of affairs is right in line with the UK, Canada, and Australia joining with France in voting to put Iran on the Human Rights committee at the United Nations. Try as I may, I can’t think of a less fitting appointment.
If you want evidence that these nations have already surrendered to Islamic terrorism, you can’t ask for any better. That move alone more than justifies the questions President Trump is raising about the validity of NATO.
Those countries, led by France, share a problem these days, and it is one that doesn’t bode well for their future usefulness. Led by the French, they don’t know which band of terrorists to surrender to.
Thought of the day: Within the context of today’s discussion, I wonder if the global left has forgotten this man’s advice so completely:
“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.” — John F. Kennedy
I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Related: The Blockade of the Blockade
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