APRIL MEANS TAXING TIMES.

In Reason, George Mason economist Veronique de Rugy offers five tax myths.

1.  The Rich Don't Pay Their Fair Share.
2.  We'll Fix the Budget Deficit by Taxing the Rich.
3.  If You Can't Tax the Rich, Tax Corporations.
4.  Capital Gains Should Be Taxed Like Ordinary Income.
5.  Tax Cuts Pay For Themselves. 

It's worth reading through her elaborations in full, and, yes, the political economy of taxation does not favor either Democrats or Republicans.  I'd note further that while she compares flows with flows in evaluating only income taxation in her first point, governments tax consumption and wealth as well as income: consider sales taxes, particularly those that vary by type of good, e.g. no tax on food at the grocery store and high taxes on food at restaurants (I'm looking at you, DeKalb, Illinois) and property taxes, which is to say, the way in which localities fund their schools, and which can be assessed on other personal property, consider registering your automobile or your boat.

Her third and fourth points get into the weeds of tax incidence, which makes reckoning exactly how much of a corporate profit tax is borne by its owners rather than its suppliers or workers: and that spills over into determining how much appreciation of capital has already been taxed in other ways.

On his Substack, David Henderson offers four technical thoughts about taxation.

1.  High marginal tax rates cause economic harm.
2.  High tax rates also cause tax avoidance.
3.  Making tax rates the same would likely reduce the demand for government spending.
4.  Most people, not just high-income people, think a proportional tax on income is more fair than a graduated tax with higher rates for higher-income people.

The first and second points are related, with the economic harm presenting as excess burden and the tax avoidance presenting as people changing their behavior in addition to looking for ways to shelter income, which Milton Friedman once quipped was "losing money in order to pay less tax" or words to that effect, and both of those distinct from, oh, in Steve Martin fashion, making a million dollars and not paying any taxes on it.  I'd like to see stronger support for the third and fourth points.  The third, in particular, suggests that politicians promise pie in the sky that some fellow behind the tree will pay for.

DEFINITELY A MISSED OPPORTUNITY.

At the beginning of the month, we noted a deportation of two Iranian fashion plates.

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."

My use of that "alleged to be kin" might have been prudent.  Reason's Matthew Petti notes, "The State Department and ICE claimed to have caught Islamic Republic nepo babies 'enjoying a lavish lifestyle.' Instead, they tore apart an innocent family."  A family of refugees from the theocracy, to be specific.

The story sounded too good to be true—because it wasn't. The alleged niece, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, and her daughter, Sarinasadat Hosseiny, are not actually related to the late general, documents obtained by Drop Site show. Soleimani Afshar's father was an only child whose parents died before the general was born, in an entirely different part of Iran. In fact, Soleimani Afshar was once jailed for protesting the Iranian government, and she fled Iran with her teenage daughter after Hosseiny appeared in a dance competition on a banned TV channel.

The young lady has assets that the local Guardians of Public Morals would rather the faithful not see.  As we publish though, we note that there are no official channels for deporting Iranians to Iran, and that someone in the current government didn't consider how turning exiles, whether middle-aged and frumpy or young and nubile, into voices for Californian freedom, might have been a better strategy.  "Instead, the administration seems to have latched onto a much more dubious case for political clout—and, ironically, ended up publicly humiliating two women over exactly the lifestyle they were persecuted for in Iran."  Dumb.

IS ANOTHER ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ALGORITHM AT WORK?

Over the weekend  our page view counter rolled past eight million, and this week the counter has registered some three hundred thousand views and counting.  Most of the recent posts continue to register between fifty and seventy views, which has been our experience for several years.  I hope live readers are getting value for their money, and that the algorithms are better for having looked in.

WHAT'S YOUR ALTERNATIVE?

Earth Day always brings out the sort of people who would like to scold us for being prosperous.  Carbon Outfront! by Lloyd Alter identifies those things we most deserve to be spanked for.  "Our planetary boundaries are being breached by cars and cows."  The author confesses to "spitballing."  Read his conclusions though, and ask yourself whether he wants the ongoing energy crunch to continue or not.

I taught my students about planetary boundaries because I realized I was too carbon-brained and wasn’t giving them enough information about many of the other problems we face. But after a week of thinking about them, I realize how interrelated they all are, and they almost all come back to the problems caused by cars and cows, both of which are directly or indirectly products of the fossil fuel economy.

I know it is a simplistic view of things, but we may see it play out in real time if this stupid war continues and the cars have no fuel and the cows have no feed.

Then I suppose we'll all live like it's 1825.

WE'RE STILL HERE.

It's Earth Day, and it's worth noting, yet again, how a cause that might have been motivated by the Cuyahoga River catching fire, by inedible fish in some of the Great Lakes, or by the health risks that rescue divers ran in Chicago, was quickly captured by the scare-mongers.

That's how our 2024 post opened, and it continued with a few examples of the recent scare-mongering.

Our 2025 post called attention to a half-century and counting of failed forecasts.

We also noted, "Somewhere the doom-sayers are doing their thing."

GIANT ROLLING DUMPSTERS?

For years, railroading's gondola cars (on the railroad, pronounced gun-DOH-luh, GON-doh-la is a boat in Venice) came in forty foot varieties with or without drop bottoms, for stones or ores or coal, and a century ago the way for a consignee to empty one when dropping the bottom wasn't an issue was to hire a high school kid to shovel it out (!) and in longer varieties called "mill gondolas," which might or might not have had drop ends and sometimes hardware for handling long steel products.  Sometimes older gondolas would be relegated to hide service.  You wouldn't want to marshal them close to the caboose on a train, and pity the hobo who didn't see a pile of something geologic and thought that would be a convenient car to stow away in.

Of late, though, the gondolas sometimes look like this one, on the old Milwaukee Road at Sturtevant.  They're operated by Secure, a Canadian company, and, yes, they function as giant rolling dumpsters.

And yes, this mutation of gondolas has been under way for some time.  As power companies closed their coal-fired generating stations, a sizable fleet of bathtub gondolas, equipped with solid bottoms and rotary couplers in order to unload a train much faster than an army of high schoolers with shovels could do it, cascaded into railroad maintenance service as well as rolling bins that could carry more scrap bundles than your basic forty foot gon of days gone by.

LET THE ANACONDA'S COILS TIGHTEN.

As of this afternoon, Pakistani diplomats have forwarded a request from Iran to continue the cease-fire.

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he will not go forward with new strikes on Iran at the request of Pakistani officials, extending the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

Trump said Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir asked the U.S. to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as [Iranian] leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal” to end the war.

Trump added that the U.S. will continue to blockade Iranian shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which has served as a key point of tension between the two countries.

No "unified proposal" suggests that the mullahs' ten point plan that Code Pink types endorsed, only yesterday, as "a workable basis for negotiations" might no longer be operative.  You'd think, if this Iranian academic correctly assesses the situation as “Iran believes it has the upper hand and that this must be established in any future confrontation,” that somebody would have informed the Pakistani mediators that the Iranian negotiators stand by their ten points, and then it would be up to National Command Authority to make counter-offers.

Our President seems to be in no hurry to send negotiators to Pakistan, which suggests he's standing by his base position, which is that the nuclear physics ends, the funding of terrorist proxies in other countries ends, the Strait of Hormuz  remains an international waterway with no tolls, and Iran's ports are closed until those conditions are met.

REALITY ALWAYS WINS.

Intellectuals forget that models are abstractions.

Intellectuals are rewarded for their models, not reality. And the data and analysis that looks elegant on paper is often disastrous on the ground. Yet, when their models are contradicted by reality, most intellectuals don’t have the courage to accept the reality, instead they double down on their models…

…and this is what turns them into idiots.

Go.  Read.  Understand.  Engage with reality.

Time to log off and mow the grass.

ACADEMIC INTROSPECTION MUST BEGIN WITH APPRAISAL OF FAILURES.

Penn historian Jonathan Zimmerman engages in constructive self-criticism in the house organ for business as usual in higher education, noting, correctly, that "Condescending dismissal is a terrific way to avoid the hard questions about our own complicity in the degradation of the university."

His article opens with an anecdote in which his colleagues re-enacted a cartoon.

The anecdote with which he opens his article has already received widespread play and mockery among the Militant Normals in social media.

In March of last year, about two months after President Trump returned to the White House, I traveled to Washington for a meeting of American education scholars. The opening panel focused — appropriately enough — on Trump’s threats to university funding, free speech on campus, and more. Then it was time for questions, and I raised my hand. I said that I agreed with all the critiques of Trump, but I also wondered what those of us who work in higher education might have done — or not done — to bring about this awful moment. Could we use it to look in the mirror, I asked, and not just to circle the wagons?

Dead silence. Then another member of the audience spoke up. “I just wanted to say that I was deeply offended by Professor Zimmerman’s use of the term ‘circle the wagons,’ which connotes a hateful history of Native American displacement and genocide,” she said, as I remember it. More awkward silence. Finally, the moderator of the panel interjected with something along the lines of: “Thank you for reminding us that we need to be careful in the language that we use to describe others.” So the panel began with a diatribe about Donald Trump’s assault on free speech and it concluded with a warning to watch our words.

Yes, I can easily envision the pursed-lip indignation, or perhaps the finger-wagging, or perhaps the "Azza" preface. Such people deserve the mockery that they get.

NATURAL INTELLIGENCE PRECEDES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

Over the weekend, the Cold Spring Shops page view counter rolled over to eight million.  The seventh million rolled over in October of last year.  It's possible that the periodic spikes of views (a typical day racks up between two hundred and two thousand) into the tens of thousands are data centers combing the internet for information that artificial intelligence algorithms can masticate.

The world in which we live in which a great deal of the human anatomy, including but not limited to the circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems, supplies resources to keep our brains functioning.  It's no surprise, dear reader, that artificial intelligence algorithms consume proportionately more resources for what might be suboptimal outcomes,  An algorithm is only as good as its programming and the inputs it receives.

I extend my thanks, once again, to the two hundred to two thousand real readers who look in each day, and I surely don't lack for things to carry on about.  There might be opportunities upcoming to carry about stuff not as directly influenced by the day's news.

A LOT CAN CHANGE IN A WEEK.

At the beginning of the week, a Daily Kos diarist posted a cartoon critical of United States war aims.

That's likely a dig at Our President's dig at Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

I SUMMON DEAD PEOPLE.

In today's news:  "60 dead people found on Illinois jury panel, triggering constitutional challenge."

The "challenge" involves legalities?  What does "tried by a jury of your peers" mean?

A Whiteside County jury panel summoned for an April trial contains at least 60 dead people – including one person who died 35 years ago – raising allegations of a systemic flaw in how Illinois compiles statewide jury lists, according to a motion filed by a defendant’s attorney.

The discovery has prompted a constitutional challenge that goes far beyond Whiteside County, suggesting a statewide problem that systematically excludes younger citizens from jury duty in violation of the Sixth Amendment.

Thus far, nobody has called attention to a potentially troubling implication.

The numbers are stark. Of the 200 people summoned for jury duty in April, 60 are confirmed dead. The median age of the panel is 72, compared with 43 years for Whiteside County’s actual population. And not a single person younger than 42 was summoned.

To repeat: the article's focus is on jury pools that skew old whilst defendant pools tend to skew younger.

THAT'S HOW IT IS WITH SACRED PRIORS.

I did not expect "For 'Sensitive Issues,' Read 'Sacred Priors'" to be validated so quickly or by an academician so highly placed.  And yet here we are.  "Garber Says He is ‘Disappointed’ by Student ‘Ignorance’ on Israel-Palestine Conflict."

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said he was “disappointed” by the widespread ignorance of Harvard students who expressed strong opinions on the Israel-Palestine conflict — and their disinterest in learning the facts of the issue.

Speaking at an event in Manhattan, Garber said he was struck both by students who held firm views without a grasp of the underlying history and by those who chose to avoid forming views altogether.

“If you’re going to have strong views about an issue,” he said, “I would hope that at a University you would have the curiosity to learn the facts.”

The remarks mark a shift in emphasis for Garber, who has spent much of the past year warning about deteriorating conditions for free expression on campus. In a December podcast appearance, he argued that Harvard “went wrong” by allowing faculty to inject their personal views into the classroom, a shift he said discouraged open disagreement.

On Monday, Garber made clear he sees the problem extending beyond faculty.

Garber described the attitude among students as “disturbing” and “ignorant,” saying he was especially troubled by a combination of shallow knowledge and reluctance to engage in disagreement.

“What I really felt was most disturbing as a Jewish president, but also somebody who cares personally a lot about the issues that were being discussed, is the level of ignorance among people on all sides of this issue,” he said.

“The lack of knowledge and this unwillingness to have open dialogue pain me even more,” Garber added.

Where to begin?  What is the effect of nearly a half-century now of cracking down on speech that "creates a hostile environment" or is "harassing and demeaning?"  What is the effect of enabling some people to live their illusions because it is "their truth," and you get written up for questioning it, on that curiosity to learn the facts?  And how often have people learned that "dialogue" is a worship-word meaning the relevant deanlet gets to set the wrong-thinkers straight?

ROBERT REICH IS RIPE FOR THE MAD-HOUSE.

Not because he's engaging in the expected riling up of Common Dreams readers with "Trump Is Stark-Raving Mad—Impeach Him Now."  That's more or less expected, and it has been so for over ten years, complete with academicians who rely on their Liberal Bonas Fides to diagnose Our President's mental health on the basis of social media posts or out-takes from the news.

Rather, it's deeper in his essay, where the Argument from Authority gets weird.  "But some voices on the right — people who have long been supporters of Trump — have had enough."

Dear reader, who might those people be?  Marjorie "Madge" Greene.  Candace Owens.  Alex Jones.  Until about two minutes ago, those are people Commn Dreams types would refer to, if they bothered to at all, as avatars of that fascism that somehow still has not descended on Common Dreams, let alone these United States.  Judge for yourself whether his including two former staffers in supporting roles sufficiently moderates his polemic.

I've never considered the representative to be the quintessence of a philosopher queen, and "podcasting" might be a way to get paid to spout off without going to the trouble of auditioning at a local radio station and working your way up, the way Charlie Sykes got from writing Prof Scam to slagging on the "half-fast train" to becoming an occasional guest on whatever MSNBC call themselves these days.  If any of those people said things I agreed with, I did not treat that as endorsement of my position, nor did that alignment constitute my endorsement of anything they said.

But the self-styled progressives are almost as eager to embrace people who offer concurrence with them than they are to excommunicate people who violate a purity test.  Years ago, there was Ariana Huffington, whose pronouncements as some sort of conservative were on occasion cringe-worthy, and who instantly became a hero to many of the people who eagerly slagged on her as an "idiot" once she switched allegiance and put her money into what became the Huffington Post.

Robert Reich?  Predictably hysterical.

WHAT DOES VICTORY LOOK LIKE?

At the beginning of the month, Marc Thiessen with the American Enterprise Institute offered five steps for Our President to declare victory.

1.  Complete all remaining military tasks.
2.  Eliminate the remaining Iranian leaders who were spared for the purpose of negotiations.
3.  Unilaterally declare victory.
4.  Impose peace terms.
5.  Bar Iran from firing on protesters and set conditions for eventual regime collapse.

It's easier to sit at one's desk in Washington than it is to implement those things, but then, the thrust of his column is "accomplish enough to declare victory and go home."  The principal objectives of the United States are that the mullahs not acquire hot rocks and that Iran stop exporting politicized gangbangers throughout Asia Minor.  Those objectives align with those of Israel and the Gulf Arab states, although, as we repeatedly note, they are not congruent.

FOR "SENSITIVE ISSUES," READ "SACRED PRIORS."

It is the custom of college newspapers to recognize Conrail Day, er, sorry, April Fools' Day, for those of you in Cucamonga, with stories too crazy to be true.  For example, "NIU scraps Mountain West plans, pivots to Big Ten," which came with the disclaimer, "This story is entirely satire."

FOUR-ONE-FOUR.

Milwaukee's area code, which used to extend beyond city limits, is 4-1-4.  Thus, even though the telephone carriers have overlaid area codes as if they seek to tile a plane with irregular polygons, Sudsville boosters make today an opportunity to tout Milwaukee, bad drivers and injured basketball and baseball players notwithstanding.

I did attend high school in Milwaukee, but to this day crack wise about having to leave because I kept missing the five pin with my first ball of the frame.

Those fours and ones have another meaning here at Cold Spring Shops.

The model is increasingly like the prototype, it was built a quarter century ago, it moved a few freight cars, and it occupies space at the works.

THE MERCANTILIST TEMPTATION.

Those oil tankers that transported the final shipments out of the Arabian Gulf had to go someplace after they delivered their cargoes.  Many of them are heading to United States ports for their next load.

I don't know whether this train, which passed the train watching camera at Sturtevant on Sunday, is a load of ethanol or of Bakken crude.

The You Tube channel soundtrack includes Canadian Pacific radio, and of late train crews have been calling attention to trespassers more frequently of late.  Whether that reflects a security bulletin or the effect of better weather on kiddos looking for new places to take selfies I don't know.

I do know that Our President is hailing all those tankers heading Stateside to pick up, and some of his cheering section in the media are carrying on about "jobs" and "exports" and all the rest.  Which is true, but let us balance that against the higher prices for finished product and the efficiency losses from sending the natural gas crude carriers over longer distances between loads.

As far as the Strait of Hormuz, Windward's most recent briefing notes, "The operating environment is now defined by active enforcement, partial compliance, and continued evasion, with vessel movement shaped by both restriction and adaptation."  There are still some eight hundred ships of all kinds west of the strait, which is a lot of cargo still to move.  The briefing noted that one of the outbound ships flew the Chinese Flag with a Hong Kong port.  Some people are making a lot of noise about that.  The ship has a cargo from one of the Gulf Arab states and its manifest is in order for passage.

YOU CAN NEVER UNDERESTIMATE HOW MESSED UP HIGHER EDUCATION IS.

Indiana game theorist Eric Rasmusen, who has an academic reputation stronger than mine and a healthy contrarian streak, is back in the news.

Eric Rasmusen, a well-known professor of economics at Indiana University, recently said he was denied his application for emeritus status.

Rasmusen retired in 2021, but decided not to apply for emeritus status until last year when the university stopped offering free access to online journal subscriptions for faculty who were retired but not emeritus, Rasmusen wrote recently on his substack.

“If I continue to be denied access, I will accept that,” he told The College Fix in a recent interview. “It isn’t fair, but I can ask friends at Indiana University and elsewhere to look up scholarly articles if I need them.”

Typically, professors who retire in good status are awarded the title “emeritus,” but Rasmusen said he was not. He believes the answer to this question goes back to 2019 and a controversial social media post about men and IQ.

When asked if he has considered taking legal action, Rasmusen said he does not plan to.

Legal action might be less effective than letting Indiana's Militant Normal politicians do their thing, or right-populist influencers influence the mockery.

Rasmusen said he prefers the approach of publicity or “an appeal to their better nature.”

The College Fix also contacted Indiana University’s media relations office, Board of Trustees, and Faculty Council twice over the past two weeks, asking what the university policy is for granting emeritus status, if the timing of a request is typically a criterion in determination of emeritus status, and whether there is a process for appealing the decision, as well as about Rasmusen. None responded.

Meanwhile, National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood told The Fix that denial of emeritus status is uncommon because “conferring such status on a retiring professor is essentially costless.”

Wood said in a recent email that “the only reason to deny it” would be “the danger of reputational damage” such as “credible accusations of plagiarism, research fraud, rape, or other criminal felonies …”

“An argument might also be made that a college or university that is in the midst of attempting to raise its academic profile might want to withhold emeritus status from faculty who are conspicuously lacking in academic merit,” Wood said.

Rasmusen, however, has not faced such accusations nor, as he pointed out, is he lacking in academic prowess.

Peter Wood might be my favorite former academic administrator, but clearly he missed the switch in "reputational damage" including the criminal felony of challenging the woke dispensation.

I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING.

A few weeks ago, Wisconsin's women's hockey team secured yet another national championship.

The men's postseason aspirations were on life support.  The way things like strength of schedule and quality wins work, though, they were an at-large participant in the national tournament as an at-large team.  They rallied to oust Michigan State in overtime to reach the Frozen Four, and then played North Dakota Fighting Hawks.  There were fans in the stands rocking their Fighting Sioux gear: imagine Chicago Black Hawks sweaters, only in green.

Wisconsin had never defeated North Dakota in the national tournament.  Last Thursday, though, they did.

Twenty years ago, the women won a national championship and a few weeks later (I am not a fan of these long pauses in the hockey tournament while the basketball tournaments go on) the men also did.

The men's championship game featured Wisconsin playing Denver.  Denver had never defeated Wisconsin in the national tournament.  Last Saturday, though, they did.  Denver have eleven national titles, including three in the past five years.  Wisconsin men have six, the most recent being the 2006 win.

Wisconsin's sports information people looked on the bright side.  "The young team proved they’ll be a force to reckon with for years to come."  That might be, although they might want to study the advice Wisconsin's 2006 coach, Mike Eaves, offered.  "In a close game where you don't get rewarded with goals you have to be patiently persistent."  That was Denver, they didn't get many shots, but they didn't let Wisconsin's aggressive forechecking demoralize them either.

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.