IRAN'S PAPER BLOCKADE.

Only last week, I asked, "Where is the fleet of Aegis carrying destroyers and cruisers to quarantine the Iranian ports?"  I got the answer I was hoping for on Saturday when two Arleigh Burkes sailed into the Strait of Hormuz, ignored Iranian requests to go away, and sailed out again.  In so doing, they made the case that Iran's closure of the strait was a paper blockade.  That's something the United States Navy understands well: there was a reason Gideon Welles rushed anything that would float to close secessionist ports in 1861: should some other naval power (meaning primarily Britain and France in those days) send a warship to make a port of call in Charleston or New Orleans, the rules of war (even without a transatlantic cable let alone radio) allowed that power to declare it was a blockade in name only, and interesting diplomatic or military things could follow.

WHAT IS THIS, JUNIOR HIGH?

I've long maintained that politics is the social dynamics of junior high with more at stake than who nails the homecoming queen.  In popular parlance, it's the cool kids facing off against the nerds, although, depending on where and when you served your time, it might have been grubs and kaleeges, greasers and freaks, jocks and theater kids, or preps and burnouts.  And politics is a place where people get to preen and display their luxury beliefs.

Now comes Thomas "Loopy" Friedman, longtime columnist for New York's Times, confirming all of it. “The problem is I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war because they are two awful human beings. They are both engaged in anti-democratic projects in their own countries. They’re both alleged crooks. They are terrible, terrible people doing terrible things to America’s standing in the world and Israel’s standing in the world. I really find myself torn. I want to see Iran militarily defeated, but I do not want to see these two terrible people strengthened."

WHAT PART OF "NO NUKES" DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?

According to Jake Johnson with Common Dreams, "Iran’s foreign minister said Sunday that the Trump administration’s representatives derailed marathon talks in Pakistan’s capital with maximalist demands, just as the two sides were 'inches away' from a preliminary agreement to end the six-week conflict."  Read on and discover the spin.  "Oman’s foreign minister, who mediated previous talks, said hours before the US and Israel started bombing Iran on February 28 that 'we have already achieved quite a substantial progress in the direction of a deal.'"  Let us give due consideration to the possibility that something might have been lost in translation, but "substantial progress in the direction of a deal" sounds like the kind of phrasing that might come out of marriage counselling.  He and she are very much at odds over many things, and yet, both of them are in the same room, and maybe they've both agreed that they like puppies.

That's very much the stuff of peace-process liberalism, which produces "a lot of process and precious little peace."

GOOD BYE, ROCKY TOP.

At the beginning of the week, a championship team built on free agency.  At the end, a perennial championship contender gutted by free agency.  "Tennessee's women's basketball team no longer has a single returning player on its roster after Jaida Civil enters the transfer portal."

Seriously?

After a tumultuous season, Tennessee is now heading into next year without a single returner. In a statement on Instagram, freshman guard Jaida Civil — who was the only returning player left on the Lady Vols’ roster — announced that she will enter the transfer portal, joining the rest of her Tennessee teammates.

“This has been the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. After deep thought and prayer, I have decided to enter the transfer portal,” Civil said. “This isn’t goodbye — it’s gratitude. Tennessee will always be a part of me.”

In the statement, Civil shouted out Tennessee head coach Kim Caldwell, whose second year as head coach has resulted in a mass exodus of her players.

“To play for one of the best up and coming coaches in the country has been a true blessing. Coach Kim — I want you to know how much I genuinely love and appreciate you,” Civil said. “The belief you had in me, the opportunity you gave me as a young woman trying to find her way — it changed my life. I will always carry that with me.”

You don't want to burn your bridges leaving, and yet the story suggests that moving on from Pat Summitt has not been easy.

Civil becomes the eighth Lady Vol to enter the transfer portal, joining starting guard Talaysia Cooper, freshman twins Mia and Mya Pauldo, senior Alyssa Latham, redshirt sophomore Kaniya Boyd and freshman guards Deniya Prawl and Lauren Hurst.

The other four players on Tennessee’s roster this season — Zee Spearman, Janiah Barker, Nya Robertson and Jersey Wolfenbarger — are graduating seniors, meaning Caldwell is now left with zero returning players for next year.

Caldwell also lost two other seniors during the season: Ruby Whitehorn, who Caldwell dismissed from the team in November after she was arrested for marijuana possession, and Kaiya Wynn, who left the team after not starting on Senior Day, saying in a statement that she had reached her “breaking point.”

Tennessee has two high school recruits who have signed with the program. One, five-star recruit Oliviyah Edwards, requested a release from her contract with Tennessee last week. The other, Gabby Minus, has not said anything on whether she will be rethinking her commitment.

How quickly the transfer portal and "contracts" have changed college sport.  Indiana as national  champion?  Tennessee's women's basketball in civil disorder?  What next, the top seeds in the men's college hockey tournament both watching the title game from the stands?

BLOCKADING HATTERAS INLET IS HARDER.

I allude, of course, to Gideon Welles's Anaconda Plan, which ultimately strangled the rebellion.  It took four years to implement, because getting control of the Mississippi River and the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico America wasn't easy.  Note how in four years, Vladimir Putin hasn't been able to do something similar with Ukraine.

A FALLEN COLOSSUS.

For years, ferroequinologists have used the concrete coaling tower east of YD Interlocking (where a secondary line once crossed the Overland Route) to frame their photographs.

That's a short Chicago and North Western business train, which might have been a corporate extravagance even then, on an inspection trip in May 1989.

HOW IT'S GOING.

The B-52s were on their way to Iran when Our President announced something along the lines of a cease-fire over Iran and pending negotiations in Pakistan.  According to Juan Cole, Iran won the war.

It did not win as in, scoring a knockout. It won in the sense that if I went 12 rounds with Deontay Wilder and was still standing up at the end of it, it would count as a win.

The Israeli-US attempt to decapitate the government failed. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated along with family members, but the 88-member clerical Assembly of Experts simply elected his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, to succeed him. The civilian minister of defense was killed, which is probably a war crime. President Masoud Pezeshkian appointed IRGC General Majid Ebnelreza as acting minister of defense. The pragmatic civilian Secretary of the National Security Council, Ali Larijani was assassinated, likely another war crime. He was succeeded by hard liner Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, a former IRGC general. In essence, Trump and Netanyahu made an internal coup against Iran’s centrist pragmatists in government, ensuring that they were replaced by far right hard liners.

Going into the war, the Iranian government had just committed a massacre of thousands of protesters and was without a friend in the world. Trump and Netanyahu committed breathtaking war crimes on Iran and acted and spoke so monstrously that many countries ended up at least rhetorically supporting Iran, or at least opposing the war on it. Israel comes out of the war a pariah. The US is too rich, big and powerful to be a pariah but its standing has certainly plummeted and it can expect much less cooperation going forward.

Iran likely inflicted billion dollars worth of damage on the 13 US military bases in the Middle East, most of which are largely destroyed. It used cheap little drones to take out radar installations in Kuwait and elsewhere worth hundreds of millions of dollars, blinding the US to its missile barrages and allowing some deadly strikes, as on Dimona in Israel. Iran demonstrated that having a US military base does not protect the host country but rather exposes it to greater danger. Most US military personnel appear to have had to flee the bases, relocating to local hotels. Iranian intelligence in the Gulf is good enough so that some of those hotels were attacked by drones. Some personnel arrived back in Washington D.C. with only the clothes on their back and Pete Hegseth doesn’t seem to have helped them much.

That might elicit earnest nods in an Ann Arbor common room, but it might be that eliminating as many Iranian government officials as the allies have has fractured the unity among what's left of the government's leaders, and that might have led to Pakistan suggesting private peace feelers that are distinct from what the mullahs are offering for their subjects' edification.  Read on , and discover that even Mr Cole might see the Iranian victory as pyrrhic.

Iran has seen important research institutes, university programs, steel mills, petrochemical complexes, and other economic and infrastructural sites destroyed. It is likely, however, that these can be rebuilt if Iran has convinced Israel that it has the means of deterrence. It is likely that Russia and China will help with the rebuilding, behind the scenes, because a strong Iran able to stand up to the US and its Israeli proxy is in their interests.

Predictable stuff from a long-time suck-up to the jihad.

HOW IT STARTED.

Both television commentator Laura Ingraham and radio commentators Clay Travis and Buck Sexton have commended "How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran," which Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman filed in New York's Times.  Yes, that's a lot of black swans in flight at once, and here's why.

This account of how Mr. Trump took the United States into war is drawn from reporting for a forthcoming book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” It reveals how the deliberations inside the administration highlighted the president’s instincts, his inner circle’s fractures and the way he runs the White House. It draws on extensive interviews conducted on the condition of anonymity to recount internal discussions and sensitive issues.

The reporting underscores how closely Mr. Trump’s hawkish thinking aligned with Mr. Netanyahu’s over many months, more so than even some of the president’s key advisers recognized. Their close association has been an enduring feature across two administrations, and that dynamic — however fraught at times — has fueled intense criticism and suspicion on both the left and the right of American politics.

Yes, there's a lot of the predictable, antagonistic ankle-biting in that passage.  Read on:

In the Situation Room on Feb. 11, Mr. Netanyahu made a hard sell, suggesting that Iran was ripe for regime change and expressing the belief that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic.

At one point, the Israelis played for Mr. Trump a brief video that included a montage of potential new leaders who could take over the country if the hard-line government fell. Among those featured was Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, now a Washington-based dissident who had tried to position himself as a secular leader who could shepherd Iran toward a post-theocratic government.

Mr. Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal.

Besides, Mossad’s intelligence indicated that street protests inside Iran would begin again and — with the impetus of the Israeli spy agency helping to foment riots and rebellion — an intense bombing campaign could foster the conditions for the Iranian opposition to overthrow the regime. The Israelis also raised the prospect of Iranian Kurdish fighters crossing the border from Iraq to open a ground front in the northwest, further stretching the regime’s forces and accelerating its collapse.

No, those hopes have not, six weeks in, proven out.

REDISCOVERING AN IDEA.

In 1948, British astronomer Fred Hoyle, who might have been the Carl Sagan of that era, observed, “once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available… a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.”  With Apollo VIII of Christmas 1968, such photographs were possible.

Yes, there are people who argue such images inspired the people who seek to protect the environment to greater activism, and yes, the first Earth Day was in 1970.

In Carrying the Fire, at page 470, Apollo XI command module pilot Michael Collins wrote,

I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. Those all-important borders would be invisible, our noisy arguments silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.

Artemis II pilot Victor Glover, now on his way back to the blue marble, echoed those earlier sentiments.

In all of this emptiness, this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe — you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. I think as we go into Easter Sunday thinking about all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and that we’ve got to get through this together.

The noisy arguments continue all the same, and getting through this "together" might be a forlorn hope, as neither Nature nor Nature's God has revealed that unified understanding, or even the outlines of that unified understanding.

BAR FIGHT.

It is the custom of the men of the Middle East to posture and bluster.  It's uncommon for a President of the United States to do so.  As James Joyner notes, "The Madmen Theory doesn't work when both sides are using it."  Sometimes, all you have left is to drop gloves and go.

Trump famously reneges on deals all the time, seeing compliance with terms he’s agreed to as foolish. He already dashed JCPOA, which was as good a nuclear deal with Iran as we’re likely to ever get, given the two sides’ leverage. At the same time, IRGC and other regime leaders clearly don’t care about the well-being of the Iranian people, so threats to bomb the country “back to the stone ages” are not particularly concerning. If anything, carrying out that pledge would cement America’s status as the Great Satan for generations.

As of noon, God's Time, there are air raids on military facilities on Kharg Island and Israeli planes are taking out railway bridges.  Make of it what you will that at 7 pm, Eastern Daylight Time, Our President is hosting a dinner, closed to the press, with the United States Ambassador to India.

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN DEVONSHIRE.

No, not the famous incident of the dog that did nothing in the night-time.  This dog was active in full view in the day-time.  Paul Phillips, of Clyst Honiton, thought his dog's behaviour was curious.

Paul said: “It is fascinating that we have found a bit of history in my garden. My dog, Stanley, has been digging in the same spot in our garden for prob­ably about a year. We kept patching up and even at one point had to put a paving slab over it but he was insistent there was something there he wanted.

“One day I went outside and Stanley had exposed a pipe, so I got on my hands and knees, had a rummage around, did some mini-excavation and realised it was a bottle. It was a bright blue bottle in perfect, mint condition and said the words, ‘Not To Be Taken’ on the glass.

There's something of a two-pipe problem in the story that follows.

“I thought that was cool and did some research, and it came up as a Victorian poison bottle, and then I I remembered reading something about a hanging in the village years ago. So I went back online and found the old newspaper article about William and Mary Ann Ashford living in Clyst Honiton in 1865 next door to the police station – which is the next door to us but one.

“It was there I believe Mary and her husband used to live and she was having an affair.

“I think our prop­erty used to be a big cider barn and there would have been more land. But it is so weird, if you had bought that bottle for the right reasons – like killing rats or something – why would you bother bury­ing it? The fact there was a murder due to poisoning in the nextdoor down from us – you have to put two and two together. The fact it was buried and not thrown away shows someone was trying to hide it.’’

We have the motive which is money, the body that is dead, and the dog who has delivered the evidence and is relaxing.

William Ashford was a shoemaker by trade and had an estate valued at £120, Mary Ann being the sole beneficiary of his will. She was hoping to use this money to set up home with Frank Pratt. Newspaper reports suggest Will started feeling ill and was regularly given medicine for an undiagnosable sickness. He suddenly died and Mary was arrested by the police officer living next door. Tests later showed his wife had traces of arsenic and strychnine on her clothes.

Paul said the “brutal” story about Mary’s hanging has left him not wanting to keep the bottle inside the house. He said: “It was a brutal hanging so there was no way I want the bottle in my home. It is in the garage at the moment which is a shame because it’s lovely but I bet it comes with some weirdness. My family are totally engrossed with the story, and the neighbour, a dear friend and councillor, loves it too.”

Paul added that Stanley has not been digging in the spot since the discovery and hopes a local historian will help the family find out more information about the unique story.

He said: “What’s crazy is that Stanley, after he dug the bottle up, hasn’t been digging there since. If there is a local historian who is inter­ested in coming to have a chat and do a bit more digging, that would be great”

Hangings are ghastly, even when they're done properly.  The story is about the dog's discovery, not about the evidence to convict Mrs Ashford (she confessed) of the murder of Mr Ashford.

A CHAMPION BUILT BY FREE AGENCY.

Sunday afternoon, the U.C.L.A. women's basketball team won their second national championship.  Their previous championship was in 1978 with Ann Meyers Drysdale (royal weddings aren't only for solidifying alliances) coaching and the tournament was organized by something called the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.  Their opponent in the title game?  Maryland.  These days, both teams have strong basketball traditions, but with conference realignment they might play a conference game midwinter or meet in the Big Ten tournament.

The Mama Bruins have figured in several recent tournament finals, and the Culture Wars unfortunately sometimes intrude.  "A Los Angeles sports pundit named Ben Bolch thought it would be funny to enthuse the UCLA fans with 'UCLA-LSU is America’s sweethearts vs. its basketball villains.'"  Whatever.  I'll note that you could pos a picture of the current team with a video of California Girls without anybody cringing.

THAT AGED POORLY.

Over the weekend, an Air Force F-15E crashed in Iran.

Friday morning, April 3. An F-15E Strike Eagle was apparently hit by Iranian fire near the village of Talkhuncheh, Isfahan Province, Iran. There is a lot of boasting from the Iranians about an advanced passive infrared detection system used to guide a missile. There are online accounts linking the downing to Russian ships arriving at Iranian ports. We don't know the cause, but based on the history of the Operation Epic Fury air campaign, the plane going down from a bird strike is just as likely as an Iranian anti-aircraft missile. Both pilot and weapons systems officer (WSO) eject.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that it was Iranian ordnance.  Predictably, Common Dreams types (in this post, Stephen Prager, who now has a more flattering portrait making him look less like a pimply adolescent) engaged in snark.

If it is confirmed that Iran was responsible for downing the American jets, it takes a sledgehammer to the idea that the country’s capabilities have been destroyed, adding to the seemingly endless stream of lies coming out of the administration about everything from the price of gas to whether Iran is negotiating even in charge of the country.

At least 15 American troops have been killed in the region since Trump launched the war in Iran, according to an analysis by The Intercept earlier this week. More than 520 US troops have also been injured, but CENTCOM has sent outdated casualty numbers to media outlets and refused to say how many total troops have been killed, leading to accusations of a “cover-up.”

Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, took a victory lap on social media after news broke of a US plane being downed on Friday and mocked Trump’s claims that the US and Israel have destroyed Iran’s regime.

“After defeating Iran 37 times in a row,” Ghalibaf said, “this brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?’”

From the time stamps on the post and the embedded social media, by the time Mr Ghalibaf teased "can anyone find our pilots?" both had been located.  

Furthermore, social media posts that Iran allowed to be posted confirmed air supremacy.

USAF HC-130 refueling a pair of HH-60G Pavehawks over Iran while searching for the downed F-15E aircrew today. pic.twitter.com/V5Xgs5Ew5t

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) April 3, 2026

"Air superiority" means aircraft can operate at high altitudes with little risk.  "Air supremacy" means they can operate at middle altitudes with little risk.  From what I understand, you still don't want to get too predictable about your approach routes and you're always at risk from somebody with a portable antiair missile or four fifty-cal pom-poms or an ancient 88 with properly fused shells.

Now it might be that the Iranians were posting old footage or fakes, and yet, a fake that tells the locals the United States can refuel choppers with impunity over Iranian territory doesn't strike me as a confidence builder.  But as they were posting that video, the United States had acquired the emergency beacons from both fliers and laid on an operation to retrieve them.  "According to the Iranians, having Americans come into your crib, set up shop, rescue downed aircrew, kill your thugs, and blow up your stuff is a victory. So happy 'We Beat the Great Satan' day to all of you."

The next 24 hours promise to be interesting.  Buckle in.

A MISSED OPPORTUNITY?

We are a creedal nation.  Regular readers know the argument.

"Give these kids an America to buy into, and an America that buys into these kids, and we'll be OK."  Pajamas Media contributor Jamie K. Wilson would like to restrict that a bit.  "An American is a person who belongs to the historic political, cultural, and moral community formed by the United States — a community joined not by ancestry alone but by entering, adopting, and upholding its constitutional order, its laws, its common language, its civic story, and its ethic of self-rule, ordered liberty, and mutual responsibility."  I suppose my youth in Milwaukee where one could still find storefronts and sometimes libraries labelled in German, Polish, and Spanish makes me less inclined to be restrictive about language, and I've tended to view cultural and moral communities as emergent and evolving: do we still want to observe Sundays in the way of the Puritan rather than of the German?

The "missed opportunity" my post refers to is the upcoming deportation of Iranian women alleged to be kin of Iranian terrorist commander Qasem Soleimani, who have been living in California and much more in the way of the Californian than of the Shiite.  "Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, who celebrated attacks on US soldiers and military bases in social media posts, and her daughter Sarinasadat Hosseiny, were nabbed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday and had their green cards revoked over ties to the Iranian regime."  Power Line's John Hinderaker notes that Western fashion influenced the ladies in a way that, put simply, would not go down well with the guardians against vice back in Asia Minor.  "Afshar may have reviled the U.S. as the Great Satan, but she herself reveled in a luxurious Los Angeles lifestyle, presumably courtesy of the oppressed people of Iran."

I'll expand on my "missed opportunity" thesis, complete with eye candy, below the jump.

WHO'S THE HEEL?

Pro wrestling used to (it still might, I haven't been paying attention) add entertainment value by scheduling matches between heroes and heels.  Years ago, the heel often had some sort of implied Cold War connection (if you're familiar with Rocky Balboa fighting Russians, that might be where the scriptwriters got the idea) which latterly turned into some sort of Middle Eastern connection.  Or sometimes it could be middle-aged white dudes talkin' trash, and sometimes they switched roles, such as when Black Jack Lanza had a grudge match with Doctor X, who was revealed as a wrestler called Bruce Marshall.  And politics borrows a lot from pro wrestling, something that Donald Trump grasps, and for all I know, Margaret Brennan might lean into her role as a heel.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

A partially completed model railroad still offers plenty of play value if the right bits of trackwork are in place and functional.  I can while away close to an hour simply exchanging hot metal cars at the steel works, and running a passenger train around the milk train likewise keeps the operators busy.

That's a highlight reel of what was running during the recently-concluded March Meet.  I tend to have a short train running continuously on the powered display track up high.  The drive units on the rebuilt old-style Atlas F units require more tweaking.

The continued early spring weather suggest more opportunities to carry on with heavy construction and sessions at my workbench.

FAREWELL TO THE MID-AMERICAN CONFERENCE.

Northern Illinois University's return to the Mid-American Conference in the mid-1990s after about a decade competing first as an independent and then participating in several conferences didn't work out well at all in basketball.  The athletic department accepted the resignation of the men's head coach Rashon Burno's resignation at the end of his five year contract, subsequently hiring Matt Majkrzak away from Northern Michigan.  Nobody can write derivative securities like the agent for somebody in big time sports.

Majkrzak will receive a contract extension of up to one year if either of two events occurs: The Huskies win a Horizon League regular-season or conference tournament championship, or NIU athletic director Sean Frazier leaves the school’s employment before March 15, 2030. Such terms were not included in Burno’s contract.

NIU will also pay for several performance incentives, including $5,000 for a 20-win regular season (only one non-D1 win will count toward the total) and $10,000 each for Horizon League Coach of the Year honors, a regular-season title, a conference tournament championship, an NCAA tournament appearance or a Final Four berth. Majkrzak can also earn $2,500 if NIU reaches the National Invitational Tournament or the College Basketball Invitational and $5,000 for winning either tournament.

The contract includes no mention of a buyout for Majkrzak’s remaining contract at Northern Michigan, which was set to expire June 30, 2027. NIU will provide Majkrzak a one-time relocation stipend, as well as a courtesy vehicle and $25,000 for donor engagement efforts.

If Majkrzak resigns or is fired for good cause, NIU will only be liable for employment payments or benefits past the date of the contract’s termination. If Majkrzak is fired without good cause — which would include performance-related reasons — the school will owe him 100% of his base salary for that contract year and the year following and 50% of the base salary for each subsequent year.

Should Majkrzak leave to accept another position, he will be required to pay a lump sum within 90 days of his resignation.

The women's team hired a new coach a year ago and they completed their season on a positive note, coming from behind to beat Buffalo on Senior Night.

The Huskies took a slim two-point lead after an 8-0 run, leaving Buffalo with 10 seconds to steal the game back. The Bulls’ opted for a potential game winning three but the Huskies’ defensive shape forced a miss to close out the comeback win.

“Super proud of our resiliency and being able to come together in tough moments.” head coach Jacey Brooks said. “The game was a little bit of a roller coaster but we were able to make some adjustments at halftime. The defensive plays in the fourth quarter was the difference in the game.”

Multiple seniors graduated, and with the transfer portal, who knows what sort of five will take the court in November.

“This game was almost like the epitome of our season, of staying the course and never giving up. They’ve only gotten better and will continue to get better,” Brooks said. “When we think about next year, I’m overly excited about next season and can’t wait for it. But we’re gonna continue to build this thing.”

That remained her attitude despite a road loss at Bowling Green.

“I believe we’re building something special here,” Brooks said. “ We’ve got some good recruits and returners, but this year was about laying the foundation and culture for years to come.”

The Huskies will now enter the offseason as they prepare to join the Horizon League.

At the same time Northern Illinois bade farewell to the Mid-American, the Mid-American bade farewell to its presence in the various tournaments.  A year ago, the Buffalo women won their National Invitation Tournament on their home court.  For years, multiple Mid-American also-rans have participated in that tournament, and several have won it.  The 2025-2026 season?  Buffalo went 1-17 in conference, their sole win over Toledo, one of those perennial Invitational participants.  This year?  Only Ohio was invited, and excused in the first round.  Much of the field rates a bye, but not Ohio.  The Women's Basketball Invitational?  Nobody.  Make of it what you will that Columbia won it.  In the men's National Invitation Tournament (if you remember Al McGuire turning the NCAA down to play in it and win it, you're old) only Kent State participated, and they were one and done.  Miami of Ohio won all their conference games but couldn't get through the conference tournament: both tournament winner Akron and at-large Miami were one and done.

Finally, though all brackets might be imperfect, to submit a winning entry it still helps to err on the side of the highly regarded teams.  In the women's tournament, the winner will be one of the top seeds, as no chalk was erased as Connecticut, South Carolina, U.C.L.A. and Texas qualified.  The winning entries in your local pool will be those that most accurately identified who got eliminated when, perhaps with a tiebreaker based on the score.  In the men's tournament, one finalist will be a top seed.  Duke haters are happy it's not Duke: you get Arizona playing Michigan, which is not much better, for the right to face either Illinois or Connecticut.  Yes, the table is again set for both Connecticut teams to be cutting down the nets.

AS SPRING BREAK WINDS DOWN.

Passover has begun, as I post this churches are about to offer Maundy Thursday services, with Good Friday and Easter to follow, and spring break winds down with the return of the collegians, and the latest strains of the common cold, to campuses.  And Charles C. W. Cooke is not amused with the genre of shock journalism called "ask chicks in bikinis about Serious Things."  Summarized, he asserts, "There is no great need to berate clueless adolescents for enjoying the tail end of their childhoods."  And for the simplest of reasons: sometimes letting it all go for a while is healthy.

For a start, it’s not at all obvious to me that the people on that beach are any less knowledgeable about current affairs than those of a similar age who spend their days being indignantly political on social media and beyond. It is true that the figures whom Fox interviewed do not know anything useful about immigration or foreign policy or economics. But, frankly, neither do most “engaged” 18-year-olds, many of whom, by dint of their peculiar obsessions, have talked themselves into holding some of the stupidest ideological opinions ever witnessed by the tired eyes of man. I am not, as a rule, an advocate for ignorance, but I am willing to bet, for example, that the median beachgoer in Fox’s video has a better instinctive understanding of American politics than the median attendee of a Brooklyn DSA meeting. Now, as ever, intensity does not wisdom create.

I’d also be willing to bet that those beachgoers are far happier than most political obsessives — and, at age 20, happy is a pretty important thing to be. When you read the various judgments that have been rendered in this case, it is impossible to miss the whiff of Puritanism, which was famously defined by H. L. Mencken as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Left unspoken in every condemnation is the insistence that, rather than remain ignorant in their bliss, those people should be serious, focused, vehement, and miserable. But there will be plenty of time for that. A few years after they have left the beach, those “revelers” will have jobs, mortgages, and children. Life, as the meme has it, will come at them fast. And, when it does, they will learn about politics — or, in many cases, not learn about politics — in much the same pattern as human beings typically do.

If anything, the existence of people who can play like grasshoppers in the summer suggests that things are not as bad with the world as our Excessively Earnest People would have us believe.

Historically, it is a great privilege to live in a time and place in which one’s primary concern can be “what bikini I’m gonna wear next.” To see young and unencumbered people with such habits is not a national disgrace or a societal failing or a civilizational problem to be solved, but a sign that our system is ticking along nicely. If one accounts for the changing fashions, the videos from Fox’s beach party could have been taken in 2005 or 1990 or 1975 or at any time in the modern era in which the United States was not engaged in a totalizing catastrophe. If, in our passion, we are determined to censure the oblivious, then let us do it within more appropriate climes. Harvard, say. Or Congress. Or, dare I say it, the press.

Perhaps, after such a long time between one totalizing catastrophe and the next, the ensuing catastrophe will be more totalizing.  That's the logic of the ekpyrosis.  On the other hand, if you're complaining about spring breaking kids who don't know much about history, or, for that matter, about vendors of artisanal pet food delivered to your door, you might be crying with your mouth full.

LET THE ANKLE-BITING BEGIN.

Our President gave a speech last night that probably changed exactly zero minds.  That might be because everybody who has been paying attention to the dismantling of the mullahs' tyranny is so wedded to his priors that there's no changing minds.  Consider "Trump's Iran Speech" by Outside the Beltway's James Joyner.  "Nineteen minutes. Zero answers."  Which conclusion he validates by citing all the usual founts of Establishmentarian Process Worship, i.e. New York's Times, Washington's Post, National "Public" Radio, The Associated Press (editorial takeaways rather than reporting), Reuters (same gripe), The British Broadcasting Corporation (This is Londonistan).  His complaint?  "While I’ve thought President Trump owed the public more explanation for the war effort than he’d given so far, scheduling a prime time address creates expectations that some major new development will be announced. Simply, as BBC put it, rehashing his social media posts falls well short of that. This was the classic meeting that could have been an email."

THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEATH CULT.

Isn't a non-government actor interfering with waterborne commerce committing piracy?  "Ocean Defenders Collide With Industrial Krill Trawler in Antarctica."  Apparently because with less whaling, there are more hungry baleen whales about, and somebody has to protect their opportunities to feed.

“The krill fishing industry is fully aware of the damage they cause, such as killing whales in their nets, yet they do all they can to greenwash krill products,” said Bob Brown Foundation Antarctic and marine campaigner Alistair Allan. “We applaud the brave actions of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, who are ensuring that the plunder of krill does not go unchallenged.”

“Krill is violently sucked out of Antarctica’s fragile wilderness all for products we don’t need, such as fish farm feed, pet food, and supposed health products,” Allan added. “It’s time for the world to boycott all products with krill in them.”

It is not for the likes of Ocean Defenders to determine what their neighbors "don't need."  Fish farming might take the pressure off natural fisheries, pet food keeps cat ladies from being crazier, and "supposed health products" could refer to Big Pharma's products or to the stuff of nature cures.  The luxury beliefs of environmentalist wackos can be deadly.

TOO EARLY TO BE PUTTING A PIN IN IT?

Hurricane season begins on the first of June.  (I have no memories of a sappy love song rhyming "typhoon" and "monsoon" along with the obligatory "moon" and "June" and sometimes "spoon" and "croon.")  That doesn't stop the punters from getting their first guesses out.  "Atlantic hurricane season forecast 2026: 11-16 named storms predicted by AccuWeather."

Roman priests might have examined the stones in chicken gizzards.  These days, the entrails are more liquid.

A developing El Niño will be one of the biggest forces shaping the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, and is one reason the number of storms could be near to below historical averages. Still, hurricane preparedness is critical as multiple storms could make landfall in the United States this season.

It's foolish to live in the North without the snowblower serviced before the season and situational awarness on those days when maritime tropical air collides with continental polar.

CLASSIC RAILROADING ENDED WITH CONRAIL.

Fifty years ago, your tax dollars paid for the founding of the Consolidated Rail Corporation, which sought to stem the liquidation of freight railroad capacity by putting federal money behind a rebuilding of the freight railroads of the Official Region out of the most useful bits of Penn Central, primarily their Water Level Route along the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers and Lake Erie, with a few pieces of The Pennsylvania Railroad kept in the Pittsburgh area and from Indianapolis to St. Louis, and lesser parts of Erie-Lackawanna in the southern tier counties of New York as well as a Reading and Lehigh Valley line east from Harrisburg to New York to avoid sharing tracks with Amtrak.

Subsequently, regulatory reforms plus privatization of Conrail led to a freight railroad network that has been profitable enough to avoid further raids on the Treasury, if not imaginative enough to solicit the sort of traffic the classic railroads used to handle as a matter of course.

It was during the decline of the classic railroads from the mid-1960s until the Penn Central bankruptcy, with passenger train discontinuances, abandonments of branch lines and secondary main lines, and deteriorating labor relations and physical plant, that ferroequinologists came to refer to E-T-T-S.

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was a guest on the Sunday shows and he offered guests of the House of Stephanopoulos with the eponymous moderator doing his usual impression of a nervous chihuahua.  Toward the end of the segment, he laid out the United States's objectives.

The President laid them out on the first night of the operation.  I’ll repeat them to you now because I hear a lot of talk about we don’t know what the clear objectives are.  Here they are.  You should write them down.  Number one, the destruction of their air force.  Number two, the destruction of their navy.  Number three, the severe diminishing of their missile launching capability.  And number four, the destruction of their factories so they can’t make more missiles and more drones to threaten us in the future.

All of this so that they can never hide behind it to acquire a nuclear weapon.  That was our objective from the beginning; that remains our objective now.  We are on pace and in fact ahead of schedule on some of those things, and we are going to achieve those things in a number of weeks, not in a number of months.

That's where the interview ended, perhaps because producers had a full segment, or perhaps because the chihuahua knew, as Sarah Anderson suggested for Pajamas Media, that he'd been pwned.  She also suggests that diplomacy involves a variation on the good cop and the bad cop.  "This is what the president does. I always joke that when Trump says something outrageous, look to Rubio to explain what he really means in polite company."

STEAMING INTO THE SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL.

No railroads, no United States as we know it, no successful prosecution of a two-front war in the 1940s.  Steam locomotive operators, both common carrier and preservation, are well-and-truly steamed up for the summer.

Union Pacific's Big Boy 4014, which might be hawking the intended merger with Norfolk Southern in going coast-to-coast, is the biggest steamer in action.  There are many others.

Newcomers to the 2026 season will include a trio of Northerns: Santa Fe No. 2926, Southern Pacific No. 4449, and Spokane, Portland & Seattle No. 700; plus a pair of Mikados: Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad No. 8419, and No. 4501 that is slated to re-emerge sporting the Southern Railway’s passenger green paint. Additionally, the winter early birds — Nos. 4960, 2102, 148, and 1309 — will all return to steam this spring.

The article offers a listing of scheduled trips as of reporter Lucas Iverson's knowledge at printing time.

Subsequently, the operators of Milwaukee Road 261 announced a series of summer trips on former Milwaukee Road rails now operated by Twin Cities and Western in the vicinity of Montevideo, Minnesota.

The July 18 and 19 trips will board at the Milwaukee Road Heritage Center Depot, 301 State Road, Montevideo. The depot features an HO-scale model railroad depicting the Milwaukee Road in Montevideo during the 1950s. Nearby is the 90-foot turntable that was part of the 26-stall roundhouse complex. The turntable has been restored to operation. The Heritage Center hopes to construct a new roundhouse in the future.

Montevideo is also where some passenger car preservationists are attempting to restore one of The Milwaukee Road's Skytop Lounge sleeping cars.  There might be other relics of Hiawatha passenger service in varying states of repair there.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF DENYING COHERENT BELIEFS.

I've been fighting it out on this line since before there was a Cold Spring Shops.  "Yeah, when you deny coherent beliefs of any kind, you get incoherence."  That cannot turn out well.  "If you're going to deny coherent beliefs, everybody else has to be in on the con."  That post also noted, "Arguments from authority only work when people respect your authority."

But people in authority have been undermining their authority for a long time, while dressing up in the skin suits that Erudition and Expertise have become.  Thus does Arthur Brooks, writing in The (Not Detroit) Free Press, conclude, "Millions of Americans aren’t just misinformed. They’re searching for coherence in a world that no longer provides it."  His essay is notionally about people becoming conspiracy theorists.

Many outlandish-seeming scandals have turned out to be absolutely factual, such as the squalid Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee that lasted from the 1930s to the 1970s. Present-day cases have also occurred, such as the official discrediting of the lab-leak origin of the coronavirus pandemic—later shown to be the most plausible explanation of Covid-19’s emergence—as nothing more than an anti-Chinese conspiracy theory.

So it often goes as a high-trust society unravels.

WAS BULL RUN AN ESCALATION TRAP?

A lengthy post by Bret Devereaux, who appears to be a historian of some sort, provokes the title of my post.  As he develops his thesis, he offers the following origin story for the war.

The current war is best understood as the product of a fairly extreme gamble, although it is unclear to me if the current administration understood they were throwing the dice in June of 2025 rather than this year. As we’re going to see, this was not a super-well-planned-out affair.

The gamble was this: that the Iranian regime was weak enough that a solid blow, delivered primarily from the air, picking off key leaders, could cause it to collapse. For the United States, the hope seems to have been that a transition could then be managed to leaders perhaps associated with the regime but who would be significantly more pliant, along the lines of the regime change operation performed in Venezuela that put Delcy Rodriguez in power. By contrast, Israel seems to have been content to simply collapse the Iranian regime and replace it with nothing.

I note before we continue that National Command Authority anticipated an air campaign in excess of a month, that the United States and Israel have goals that align but are not congruent, that no battle plan survives its first encounter with the enemy, and that had the United States and Israel clobbered the mullahs on the basis of actionable intelligence that they would be meeting somewhere in Teheran without any coherent follow-on operations, somebody would probably already have leaked that to one of the legacy newspapers.

It is to that "solid blow" that I wish to turn.  Recall, in the summer of 1861, how the Georgetown cocktail party set packed picnic baskets and headed into Virginia to watch Gen^l McDowell and his forces smash up the secesh, march On to Richmond, and settle that hash once and for all.  We know that McDowell's plans came a cropper and that the cocktail party set got caught up in the ensuing skedaddle.

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Federal forces had prevailed and been able to occupy Richmond.  Mr Devereaux's essay works as an explainer for how occupying Richmond, with no forces in Memphis or New Orleans or Atlanta or Charleston would have failed.  The original capital city of the seceded states was in Montgomery, and it would be straightforward enough to return the political class there: and until something like Gideon Welles's Anaconda Plan closed the ports and reopened the Mississippi for the Union and wrecked the secesh's industrial base the war would go on.  If you think cartoonists of the era slagged on Abraham Lincoln for pursuing the war the way he, with Grant, Sheridan, Sherman; and Farragut and Porter did it, imagine those cartoonists with Richmond occupied and yet the war continuing.  Consider, also, that even with first Lee and then Johnston surrendering in April 1865 and with New Orleans, Atlanta, Charleston, and Richmond occupied, unreconstructed elements (in the manner of Iran's revolutionary guards with free rein to act locally) could continue the fight for years.  That's how the "Southern" "Poverty" "Law" Center made its civil rights bones, back in the day, litigating against such elements.

MENTAL ILLNESS AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE.

James "Long Emergency" Kunstler went to Saturday's so-called "No Kings" gatherings in two upstate New York towns.

Old folks, too, as far as the eye could see, predominately of the female persuasion: the devouring grandmothers. The Democratic Party has marshalled mental illness as its premier campaign strategy, and lately it is winning bigly around the country as mental illness becomes the go-to cope option for the ragged remnants of Boomerdom.

To his east, Common Dreams contributor Phil Wilson saw the same thing in Lesbianville, where he put a braver spin on it.

Indeed, these people, the majority for sure, sport grey hair, wrinkles, wearied gaits and maybe the strange understanding that, in a seeming eyeblink, we all have been transformed from young, zealous radicals who once chanted “two, four, six, eight, organize and smash the state,” to becoming part of a last stand against the fascist nightmare that would have blown our minds in 1968. I see young people too, but not enough. Mostly white people make up the throngs, but Northampton is just a small piece of something vastly larger.

The Fourth Estate captured the same demographic in Oregon, Illinois.

Earleen Hinton photograph retrieved from Shaw Media.

It gets tiresome, the same stuffed animals costumes, the same references to actually existing fascist states where such assemblies would be met with gunfire (I'm looking at you, Iran), and it's amusing how the more information that comes out about the corrupt establishment's fixer, the more Democrat participation comes to light.

Mr Wilson might have said the quiet part out loud. "At some point there will hopefully be mutual clarity, plans, resistance, strikes, boycotts, blocked traffic, but we need sheer numbers, and a pause in ideological oneupmanship."

WHY THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE HAPPENS.

In a commentary on a recent Supreme Court ruling staying Our President's punitive taxes (thanks, Don!) tariffs, Outside the Beltway's James Joyner observes,

Forcing Congress to do its damn job is the obvious Constitutional solution to balancing that power.

Alas, that institution has become stultified in recent decades, partly because it has delegated so much power to Executive agencies. I have little confidence that it will actually function again anytime soon.

Indeed not.  With Easter and Passover travels about to begin and airport security still relying on the goodwill of workers hoping for a paycheck,  the House and Senate got into another pissing contest.

Sadly, we dive into the chaos of procedures, party disputes, and institutional rivalries. The Senate approved a funding measure by voice vote to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security, except for Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The frontline troops are financed through the big, impressive bill. Its civilian staff is not. The Senate passed this around 3 am and then left town. They aren't expected to return until April 13.

Meanwhile, House members were outraged that they were not consulted, believing that the partial funding of DHS, one of 12 key appropriations measures each year, shouldn’t be managed this way. They are relying on a 60-day continuing resolution, which means the DHS shutdown will continue for at least another two weeks. The good news is that TSA agents will be paid, thanks to President Trump signing an order permitting reserve monies from last year's tax cut bill to be released.

Pray that Judge Boasberg will be on his spring break rather than doing his usual job playing at being the president.  Shutdown theater is what Congress does, though, to get what it wants.  "Regular order appropriations are the last thing Washington politicians want.  'It's as if nobody in Washington wants to be bothered with regular order appropriations.'"

Yes, Matt Vespa writes for Town Hall and his column has the obligatory harrumphing about Schumer shutdowns, but there might be poison pills in that continuing resolution in the form of language fully funding all homeland security functions including immigration and border enforcement.

How many times do I have to carry on about the absence of regular order appropriations being Congress's preferred way of doing things?

INFRASTRUCTURE IS THEIR LEAST IMPORTANT PRODUCT.

In Transportation for America, Corrigan Salerno asks, "This Congress is focused on how federal dollars go out the door in the next surface transportation reauthorization, and it looks like states might win big time. But with a track record like theirs, why shouldn’t Congress consider who else might use their money better?"

Nobody?

With the vast majority of funding flowing directly to them, State DOTs are, in effect, in charge of the federal highway program. If they are to claim credit for successes, they need to be held accountable for their failures. While local-led planning and project delivery could get things wrong just as much as state DOTs do today, they may also end up being more accountable to the priorities and nuances of communities, based purely on their proximity. When your city or county misspends money or fails to take care of obvious needs, it’s a lot easier to hold them accountable than a faceless, faraway, typically unelected state transportation agency.

As an indication of just how far away they are from thinking about outcomes, one of AASHTO’s top talking points revolves around how good they are at spending other people’s money quickly.  Obligation rates, meaning simply the speed at which federal dollars are spent by a recipient, do not imply any measurement of success based on outcomes. If anything, the use of obligation rates as a metric should be scrutinized. What are you getting for that spending? Are results improving at unprecedented rates? Or are DOTs just prioritizing funding any investment as fast as possible?

In the manner of anything governmental, one requires a list of acronyms. "DOT" refers to state departments of transportation.  "AASHTO" refers to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.  That "and transportation" is a recent addition, as the acronym used to be "AASHO" which offers opportunities for all sorts of mischief.

None of which matters.  County road commissioners and state departments of road building are competing to get federal matching funds, which is to say, the local rent-seekers get to wet their beaks and future generations are on the hook to repair or replace it, which means hoping some future Member of Congress will write that project into some future porkulus.

WILL THE THING BE PRESSED?

Our President is negotiating, or not, perhaps through an intermediary, with Iranian officials who are, or not, making decisions of state.  As we prepare for a weekend of recovery from the big O Scale show and determining the finalists in the basketball tournaments, Our President is hailing the passage of eight, or perhaps ten, oil tankers that he described as "a gift" and he has pledged not to make good on his threat to unleash the Air Force on Iran's power plants until April 6.  Iran's passage guarantees apparently didn't apply to at least two Chinese container ships.  His Secretary of State is still dickering with European diplomats who maintain a touching faith in the sort of diplomatic process that has worked so well for the past half century.  While the reality show president engages in the sort of showmanship that gets the Excessively Earnest People fretting, Israel's military continues to press its case.  "Defense Minister Israel Katz warned on Friday that Israel would ramp up its strikes on Iran in the coming days, citing continued Iranian ballistic missile fire at civilian targets in Israel, despite US President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to bring the hostilities to a halt."

IF ONLY THERE WAS A QUICKER WAY HOME.

The Green Bay Packers just put up two touchdowns on the Bears.  Oh, sorry, the Major League Baseball season opened in Milwaukee, with the Brewers allowing the White Sox a home run in the first and a home run in the ninth and otherwise battering Pale Hose pitching, 14-2.  And as I type, the Milwaukee traffic reporters are talking about all those people trying to get home.  Oh, did I mention that Interstate 94 is being widened in the vicinity of the Stadium.  Construction delays they'll never get back.  Wait, isn't that a line from "Take Me Out to the Ball Game?"

Now, look closely at this partially-colorized photograph, showing Milwaukee County Stadium, which the county built with the hopes of attracting a Major League Baseball team.

I forget the timing of the construction of Milwaukee County Stadium: it was there a few years before the Braves decamped from Boston, and this event took place before the outfield bleachers were built.  Focus, dear reader, on the embankment in black and white back behind the third-base grandstand and parking lot.  Two electrified tracks last operated by The Milwaukee Rapid Transit and Speedrail Corporation, and the substantial girder and truss bridge carrying trains over the Menominee River and The Milwaukee Road's main line.  And Speedrail had hoped to hang on long enough to be able to cash in on ball game traffic, as well as on passengers headed for the new Milwaukee County Zoo, a-building not far from where the electric cars ran.

That was not to be.

The photographer did not yet know that this photo, taken Labor Day of 1950 in downtown Hales Corners, was of the last run of duplex streetcar 39-40, which was wrecked in a fatal collision on a return working with the special train.

That was the end of Speedrail, although some of the right-of-way was available for streetcar service to the stadium.

That curved retaining wall on the southeast corner of Calvary Cemetery is still there, over seventy years on.  I have noted before that no Milwaukee team has won a World Series since the streetcar to the stadium went out of service.  I'm not sure whether the expansion of the expressway, which runs just to the left of the photo, will encroach on any of the trees or of those electric transmission towers, which are still in place with no streetcars or interurbans to run under them.

But I want to end this post on a cheerful note.  There have been too many gloomy posts of late.

A SMALL STEP TOWARD A STATE OF GOOD REPAIR.

After a couple of weeks of unrelentingly gloomy posting, here's an encouraging development.  "Ruth's Chris Steakhouse Is Single Handedly Bringing Society Back From The Brink By Enforcing A Business Casual Dress Code And Not Allowing Hats In The Dining Room."  That's Barstool contributor Captain Cons, with a ringing endorsement of the house rule.

I, for one, am thrilled about this even if it's been a rule for a while. Unless you're new around here, you know I am in favor of enforcing guardrails on our society. I don't need to dive deep into the sociological impacts of how we speak, dress, and act, but plenty of folks far smarter than me have done the research. The research says if we comport ourselves better in public, society improves.

It is the cluster of institutions and norms that reinforce middle-class habits that matters.

There are still a few holdouts.  "Ruth’s Chris Asks Adults to Dress Like Adults, and the Internet Has a Full Meltdown."  Well, yes, and David Manney knows why.  "Twenty-five years ago, the very idea that a nice restaurant would even need to set a dress code for normal folks would've sounded completely ridiculous."

Chili's decided to distinguish themselves by mocking Ruth's Chris.

A chain restaurant built around burgers and margaritas took a shot at a steakhouse for having standards. The hypocrisy is thicker than their queso.

Ruth’s Chris made clear their policy reflects the experience they intend to provide, which includes maintaining an environment that matches the price point and expectations of their guests.

Business casual isn't a burden; it's the baseline for a place charging top dollar for eating cow.

This entire episode exposes how deranged parts of our culture have become. To many of our friends on the left these days, I'm apparently a male chauvinist because I open doors for women, help carry heavy bags, and still say, "Please, may I?" and "Thank you."

I taught my daughters those same habits without even realizing how much it mattered. Years ago, we stopped for gas in southern Ohio during a wedding trip. They used proper manners with the cashier, who stopped what she was doing, praised how well-mannered they were, and credited their upbringing. That moment sticks with me because it shows how rare basic courtesy has become.

Standards only disappear when people stop defending them.  Just as we have been saying for years.  "Perhaps that was necessary, there being reasons to question traditions being followed simply for their own sake, and that might have been what the Consciousness Revolution was all about.  But when evidence accumulates that your experiment against reality has failed, maybe it's time to restore the norms and the signals.  I repeat: restore.  It's not about turning clocks back, it is about achieving a state of good repair."

UNINSTALLING MULLAH 3.0 ... .... ...... ......

It's going on four weeks into combined combat operations by Israeli and United States military forces to change Iran's behavior.  The history of how things kicked off, once it comes out, will be interesting.  How quickly the allied forces put this campaign together once they had actionable intelligence about a high level gathering of religious and military leaders and a targeting list and broad outlines of objectives could be a tale of brilliant improvisation, or of hubris.  That might not come out in my lifetime.

GOVERNMENT FAILURE.

Passover and Easter Week approach, and some school districts and institutions claiming to offer higher education have yet to dismiss for spring break, and it might be that Congress will take their Easter or Passover or Rent Seeker recess without properly funding airport security.

It matters not for purposes of this post which Washington politicians are at fault for it, or why.  What does matter is that unreliable employers have trouble attracting and retaining staff, and that's the position acting transport security administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill finds herself in.  "We fear we will continue to lose talented and experienced employees to other jobs that can provide a steady paycheck."  I could crack wise, dear reader, about how under actually existing socialism the nomenklatura can pretend to pay people who pretend to work, whilst under actually existing labor markets, the employer who offers to pay on some future Tuesday for hamburgers flipped passengers screened today is in trouble.  "[M]ore than 1,500 of her agency's officers have quit amid recent government shutdowns — including around 480 during the current 40-day standoff."

FAREWELL TO THE RADIO OF MY YOUTH.

For years, the noon agricultural report on WGN Radio featured the reporting of Orion Samuelson.  In those days between the exit of the Braves and the arrival of the Brewers, I made do with baseball coverage on WGN.  The transistor radio is long gone, the Cubs finally won a World Series, and the Cubs had to change the words of "Go Cubs Go" as fans no longer listen to the road games on WGN.

Mr. Samuelson, however, continued to deliver the farm report until his retirement in 2020.  "It is with profound sadness that WGN Radio shares the news of the passing of agriculture and business reporter Orion Samuelson at age 91. Orion is a name synonymous with WGN, having spent over 60 years with the station."  Farm Progress honored him as a champion of agriculture.

Samuelson soon became popular for his ability to explain agribusiness and food production in an understandable way. He and Armstrong would talk about agriculture from a studio in Chicago over hundreds of networked stations. He would explain corn production and beef demand to thousands of suburban housewives, among others. He was named Prairie Farmer Honorary Master Farmer and inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2003.

There are many more tributes and reminiscences at both links.  R. I. P.

About the same time that the Mets continued the frustration for Cub fans, including those temporary fans making do in Milwaukee, Chicago's WBBM, which I understand used to mean "We Broadcast Better Music," became an all-news station and hired in John Hultman from Detroit.  "Hultman was best known over many years at WBBM Newsradio as morning drive anchor — a role in which he served constantly for nearly 20 years and in which he was partnered with anchor Felicia Middlebrooks in 1984."  He had a distinctive way of saying "News Radio Seventy'-Eight!" to close his reports.

The station had that one month to expand the staff to what would become a 24-hour all-news station.

Hultman said early on, he anchored evenings with John Madigan — also a longtime political editor and commentator at WBBM Newsradio, whose daughter, Amy Madigan, so happens to have won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress just on Sunday of this week.

Quoted in the 1988 book "WBBM Radio: Yesterday and Today," Hultman said newsradio found its niche upon realizing it didn't have to compare itself to other media.

"We're not a newspaper, and we're not just a headline service," Hultman was quoted. "We give listeners a little information about a lot of different things, and we give it to them as it's happening."

Mr Hultman has also crossed the final summit.  R. I. P.

WINDING DOWN THE SWAP MEET SEASON.

The Chicago area March Meet is likely now the largest O Scale show in the United States, and surely the largest of the winter swap meet season.  The Gloucester Branch was available for layout tours again, and here's a look at a few of the trains that were running.

A longer video with more of the locomotives equipped with onboard power is in preparation.

MADISON GRINDS DOWN EXPLICITLY CONSERVATIVE ORGANIZATIONS.

Woke students, to abuse a term, have a long history of protecting their classmates from dissenting points of view by clearing out the racks offering the offending material and taking it to the recycle bin.

The College Fix reported a recent event in Madison.

A relatively new center-right student publication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is triggering some students and staff, as stacks of the magazine have been repeatedly and maliciously thrown away since last fall.

The Madison Federalist were tossed in campus trash bins, just the latest incident in a string of dumpings, said student Ben Rothove, editor-in-chief.

“We have had suspected tossings since the first print edition of The Madison Federalist in February 2025,” Rothove told The College Fix in an email Thursday.

“However, our first confirmed tossing happened in October,” he said. “A university employee saw me refilling a stack that had been tossed. The employee then pulled me aside and told me that another staff member had tossed the stack. According to this employee, a small group of university staff members looked through the edition and mocked its contents.”

Federalist founders had a familiar reason for creating their magazine.  Mr Rothove, who also writes for The College Fix, noted “As conservative, libertarian, or simply non-progressive journalists on UW-Madison’s campus, we are used to challenging the campus orthodoxy and facing backlash for doing so. Incidents like this reinforce that The Madison Federalist was a necessary addition to our student media ecosystem.”