DOES ANYTHING GOOD COME FROM RUNNING A CORPSE?

You'd expect the creatives at The Babylon Bee to crack wise:  "DNC 2024 Election Autopsy Just Joe Biden's Actual Autopsy"

Democratic strategists vowed to learn from the 2024 autopsy report and never again repeat the same errors. "Next time around, the party is not going to 'suffer repetitive blunt trauma due to falling off a bicycle'," said political operative Derek Hanover. "Things are going to be different moving forward. I promise you, the final words on the 2028 report will not be 'cerebrovascular accident', I can tell you that right now."

That's almost as funny as a serious Richard Eskow essay, "The ‘Autopsy’ Written by a Corpse."

You come to expect such things from Common Dreams, and, dear reader, you will not be disappointed.  How can a Holy Document not have all the Woke Worship Words?

I downloaded the document before reviewing my news feed, where I quickly learned that many like-minded people began exactly as I did: by searching for the word “Gaza.” Result? “Not found.” I then tried “Palestine.” Result? “Not found.” How about “Israel”? “Not found.”

And the omissions kept on coming!

Other words that can’t be found in the autopsy include “war,” “military,” “defense” (in the military sense), “peace,” “Medicare,” and “Social Security.” The report fails to address either the US’ runaway military spending or the ongoing attempts to undermine the country’s social contract.

The report’s only conceivable value will be for future anthropologists, who will find it provides considerable insight into the culture and folkways of the professional Democratic class. Its introduction reads like the kind of word salad a teenager might come up with when asked to write a 1200-word essay on a topic they forgot to study. There’s a lot of meandering, some restatements of the assignment, and a hastily looked-up quotation.

In the tussle between the corporatist and communist wings of the Democrat coalition, the communist wing clearly wants to double down on the soft-on-crime, weak-on-terrorism, education so inclusive nobody learns anything, punitive taxation policies.  At the margin, the Jarrett regency rubbing Normal noses in a Weimar freak show didn't help, but I submit that public money going to pretend hospices at tamale stands and pretend Quality Learing Centers antagonize voters who might be willing to let the crossers live and let live, as long as they're not medalling in girls' sports.

TAKING LEAVE OF THE MID-AMERICAN IN STYLE.

Northern Illinois University's baseball team won the Mid-American conference tournament in the sweetest possible way, defeating Toledo in their final appearance in that tournament.

The Huskies won their program-record 35th game on the season to make the occasion even more special. This is NIU's first MAC baseball title, sending the Huskies to the NCAA Regionals next week. In four games at the MAC Tournament this week, NIU outscored its opponents 32-9 and trailed only once. The Huskies' pitching staff had a 1.80 earned run average and held teams to a .193 batting average.

That earned Northern Illinois the sole Mid-American bid to the national tournament, which begins with a double elimination regional round reducing a field of 64 to eight teams that play best two out of three on the home fields of the top four seeds to qualify for the double-elimination College World Series in Omaha.

THE BOTS HAVE BEEN BUSY AGAIN.

I hope they are learning something.  Sometime during the Memorial Day weekend our page view counter rolled through nine million, some five weeks since the counter took a weekend stroll through eight million.  It's been the same pattern, episodes of activity in the tens of thousands of page views, interspersed by days with our more common experience of two hundred to two thousand page views in a day, and views of specific posts in the thirty to sixty range.

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.  It's likely that I'm going to carry on about how expensive ignorance is, based on the ongoing public conversations about data center construction.

THE MUSTER, POLISH STYLE.

I'm not sure which local bands are participating in this Polish street parade.  Sometimes they are the bands of the fire companies, or they might be civic organizations.  This parade, in Koniecpol southeast of Częstochowa, also features numerous troupes of majorettes high stepping and twirling.

But for the khrushchobas along the parade route, it puts me in mind of a smaller city Decoration Day or Independence Day parade during the American High.

THE ROAD TRIP TRADITION.

Never mind those temporarily high motor fuel prices, "America's Love Affair With the Road Endures," according to Salena Zito.

Since the first American road, the Lincoln Highway, opened in 1913, Americans have found that their relationship with their nation and the roads that connect us north, south, east, and west is almost patriotic in concept.

Whether you are on the road for hours or days, whether you stay in your home state or visit multiple others, there is a breadth of history, scenery, and experiences that connect all of us, whether we stay ensconced with our families in our cars or stay in campgrounds with a community fire ring, or at a motor lodge, or if you just take a day trip to the local state park. One of the most interesting things we could do this summer is take a road trip, large or small, to experience the country for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Ah, yes, the Lincoln Highway.  "Not far from Cold Spring Shops headquarters is the first seedling mile of the Lincoln Highway, an attempt by early twentieth-century entrepreneurs to build a paved highway from coast to coast.  The effort was as much an attempt to lobby for federal funds as it was to improve the roads."

QUIET FLOWS THE DONALD.

Over the past two weeks, diplomats all over Asia Minor have been attempting to negotiate something resembling a peace deal, or perhaps, to use the term of art, an accord, among the United States, Iran, Israel, and the Arabian Gulf countries.  It has National Review's Noah Rothman asking, "Has TACO Tuesday Finally Come to Iran?"  And yes, the past two weeks of diplomacy have Iran hawks in the United States who want to send the mullahs to their virgins losing patience with Our President.

That there are conflicting reports about why the United States so rapidly suspended their effort, "Project Freedom," to get cargo ships on their way from the Gulf to their destinations only adds to the hawks' frustrations.  Mr Rothman quotes a social media post (how diplomatic communications have changed, Charlie Brown) from Our President that the project was paused after one night at "the request of Pakistan and other Countries."  Pakistan's request might have been to give peace a chance.  The other countries might have made that request because the operating orders for the mission offered insufficient air defense for, say, Emirates oil terminals or Kuwaiti desalination plants.  Or it might be that in getting those ships through, the Arleigh Burkes expended the contents of their magazines.  James Joyner notes, "Leaked estimates are at substantial variance from administration claims."  He has sufficient integrity to complain about intelligence bureaucrats leaking material for their own reasons.

ALL HANDS TO THE PUMPS!

The Popular Perspective on work songs has long been that they establish unity of effort.

As newcomers dove into a vast backcatalog of songs, many quickly highlighted just how catchy these tunes really are. But while early sea shanty composers didn’t envision ever reaching the top of the charts, they certainly wrote them to be earworms. The sea shanty is only one variant of a work song—rhythmic melodies designed to help laborers keep pace with one another during repetitive, often backbreaking jobs. Other types of work songs developed over generations among Appalachian coal miners, prison chain gangs, and British textile workers, just to name a few examples.

Yes, tightening the side-wall on the Big Top:  "Break it, pull it, shake it, now downstake it!  Move on to the next one."

WHY BAYESIAN UPDATING IS A THING.

Reason's Ronald Bailey opens "The Surprising Divide Over What Counts as True" with an example that undermines his thesis, "A new study finds that what people think about facts, authenticity, or coherent beliefs explains why they disagree about what is true."  That's unfortunate in a world where "Truth is whatever version of reality best suits your purpose" has an unhealthily tight purchase on the mind-sets of people who should be more careful.

THE 1970S CALLED AND THEY WANT THEIR MALAISE BACK.

"Shell’s profits ‘obscene’ as European oil majors’ profits surge by 43%."  Logic is always to socialists as crucifixes are to vampires, and so it is as the anaconda's coils tighten on Iran.  "In the first quarter of 2026, the combined $21.7 billion* in quarterly profits recorded by bp, Repsol, TotalEnergies, Eni and Equinor was 43% higher than the same period last year, reflecting a significant windfall from volatile oil prices caused by the US-Israel war in Iran."

The way out?  More enforced deprivation.  “It’s time to break free from the fossil fuel doom loop – we need robust taxes on big polluters to insulate households from price shocks and to fund a cheaper, cleaner, more stable energy future for all.”

Nothing changes.  The way to avoid the end of the world the doomsday environmentalists fear is to restore the sustainable life of the primitives.  That'll show those energy profiteers!

THE BEER THAT MADE MILT FAMY WALK US.

Poor Schlitz, for the past forty years an orphan brand.

Once upon a time, Schlitz sold Old Milwaukee at a lower price than "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Furious" as a subtle form of price discrimination.  A few locals were in on the secret.

More recently, Miller Coors leased excess capacity at some of their plants to produce all of the other Great Milwaukee beers: draft-brewed Blatz, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, and for all I know Meister Brau and Braumeister.  (Well, at least Old Milwaukee, see above, and Lone Star.)

It's now come down to Miller Makes It Wrong.  " Pabst Brewing Company and MillerCoors are going to trial, with hipster favorite Pabst contending that MillerCoors wants to put it out of business by ending a longstanding partnership through which it brews Pabst’s beers."

The dispute involves the profitability of Miller's excess capacity.

The mind boggles at a single company brewing Miller Lite (they took out a trademark on the mis-spelling) and Coors Light, which is academic at Cold Spring Shops headquarters, where Budweiser is for cooking whilst Sprecher or Spotted Cow or whoever's local Marzen is on offer is for drinking.

The mind also boggles at Pabst being located in San Antonio, which used to be where Pearl Brewery switched its works with a home-built flat car motor.  As close as Miller was to Cold Spring Shops, they never had an in-house plant railway, relying on The Milwaukee Road, as did Schlitz, which had rail-served facilities at both the Chestnut Street and the North Milwaukee end of the Beer Line.  But I digress.

PRODUCTIVELY TEACHING THE CONTROVERSIES.

In "Beyond Coddling and Canceling," a trio of contributors to a useful Inside Higher Ed column suggest that waging culture wars over snowflakery is not productive.

Faculty responses to students’ concerns about engaging with material they find disturbing often fall into two camps. Those in the first camp assert that students lack resilience as a result of being coddled their entire lives and so have a tendency to frame everyday struggles as catastrophic or traumatic when they are not. This may lead to the view that we need not take these concerns seriously, that students must attend classes or events covering this content or face the consequences.

The second camp argues that students’ claims of experiencing trauma, distress, discomfort or offense necessitate a university-level response. This may take the form of “trigger warnings,” policies that allow students to avoid content without consequences or even prohibitions on sensitive content altogether. Although they have very different perspectives, these camps share some common ground in that each is deciding whether an experience can or should be coded as disturbing or traumatic enough to warrant action.

A university classroom ought to be a place to grapple with ideas, including dangerous ideas, and these authors might be recognizing that a danger properly prepared for is something to be respected but not feared.  "Our concern is with ... the growing expectation that universities should shield students from difficult content as a matter of course."

ALMOST TIME FOR PLACING PINS.

The northern hemisphere hurricane season begins on the first of June, and the National Hurricane Center will release their hurricane forecast on 21 May.  Reality sometimes falls short of the fears, which prompts Red State's Beege Welborn to quip, "We're always big fans of those underperforming years."

Anthony "Watts Up" Watts takes stock of the past quarter century of forecasts.

NOAA’s May outlooks land within their stated range for named storms roughly 17 of 25 years; about 68%, just shy of their own 70% confidence target. The hurricane count accuracy is similar. That said, NOAA aims for a range (not a point forecast), so some “hits” are easier than others in wide-range years.

There are additional challenges to extrapolating, including total tropical storms, including those that fail to intensify enough to warrant a name, and the ranges for expected severe storms within the range of all storms.

What made 2025 interesting was the story behind the numbers: despite a below-average number of named storms and hurricanes, the season had an above-normal accumulated cyclone energy rating of 130.8 units, and three Category 5 hurricanes formed; the second most of any year on record. So NOAA got the count right, but the intensity distribution was extreme. Tropical storms and hurricanes during the 2025 season were 50% more challenging to predict compared to average.

We'll take stock sometime after Oktoberfest.  We were otherwise occupied when the 2025 hurricane season gave way to Advent, and our observation after that First Sunday of Advent snowstorm that it would not be wise to bet on an ice age by February, at which time we noted the count and intensity outcomes referred to in that quote.

THE TSAR CALLS ON THE EMPEROR.

Make of it what you will that the stairway to the Russian Airbus is enclosed and has a red carpet.

I might dip into the formal welcoming ceremonies at the Forbidden City later.

LET THE SEARCH FAIL.

An academic department at an unnamed state university wanted to hire a professor.  What happened next was not amusing.

The job ad was ready to post. Under normal circumstances, it should have gone live within days.

It didn’t. First it had to clear a DEI review committee run by the college’s new Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which took about two weeks. Then it went to a second DEI committee, this one created by a newly hired Vice Provost, for another two weeks.

What were they reviewing? Boilerplate stuff — the same equal-opportunity language that appears on every faculty job posting at the university, which had already been approved by legal, already approved by HR. Yet, it took two committees four weeks to rubber-stamp a form that should have been pro forma.

What was I just saying about setting up a framework to structure a process being a useful way for grifters to wet their beaks?  Only, when there's a DEI feeding frenzy, the juiciest morsels are first to go!

While this department’s ad sat in a queue for a month, competitors were already scheduling interviews. Three or four strong candidates of color had accepted jobs elsewhere during the delay. The math was simple: a four-week holdup in a fast-moving job market means the best candidates are gone before you’re allowed to even evaluate their CV.

What remained, according to a committee member, was a pool of highly qualified white men and a handful of less-qualified white women — the stronger female candidates, like the candidates of color, were already gone.

At which point putting Process ahead of Performance mattered more to the deanlets than, oh, being able to staff some classes.  "Better to lose a year than hire a white man."  Fortunately, the department found sufficient spine to tell the deanlet where she could put her proposition and hired the guy.

This is how institutions eat themselves. You hire administrators to promote diversity. They create committees. The committees create delays. The delays eliminate the candidates you wanted. Then someone on the ground, under pressure to hit a demographic target, tries to fix it by rigging what’s left.

The good news is that Somebody in Authority did away with those diversity committees.

Will the mullahs, and the current leadership of the Democrats, suffer a similar fate?

PROGRESS?

As of this afternoon, the latest edition of the Victor E. Garden is being planted, and the ongoing negotiation over nuclear materials that the current owner doesn't want to part with goes on.  Perhaps Commander Salamander is asking the right question, "If Iran Wants to Rule Rubble, Should we Let Them?"

We’re in it now, and at this stage—having taken away the Islamic Republic’s conventional heft and ability to maintain her proxies—we have to deal with the secondary effects—getting the free flow of goods at market prices out of the Strait of Hormuz choke point…while keeping pressure on the Islamic Republic.

We are trying to find some agreement with the forces ruling the Islamic Republic that seem content to destroy Iran as long as they rule over the rubble, and impoverish everyone else as long as it helps support goal #1.

There's a division of war objectives, with the United States concentrating on restoring freedom of navigation and taking control of the fissile material, the Israelis seeking an end to non-governmental organizations with weapons cutting up on their borders, and who knows what ancient rivalries are playing out among the Gulf Arab states and Persia, who are not parties to the cease fire, such as it is, the United States and Israel have mostly been respecting.

CEASE AND DESIST THIS POINTLESS PALAVER?

There are multiple layers of conflict in Asia Minor.  The United States seek freedom of seas, including transit of the Strait of Hormuz, and an end to Iranian nuclear weapons work as long as the crazies are in charge of former Persia.  Israel's government have their own, more salient fears, of an Iranian hot rock, while they and the Lebanese seek some sort of recognition that Lebanon's government have the monopoly on violence in Lebanon, whether or not the Hezbollah militia like that.  Recently, news has come out that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have been trading shots with Iran, both in the closing days of Epic Fury and after the so-far frustrating negotiations between Iran and the United States began.

YOU HAVE DONE THAT YOURSELF.

Georgia State's Rob Jenkins correctly reminds the poo-bahs of higher education of a fundamental truth.  "Higher education has completely abandoned its mission—or at least many institutions, and many departments within those institutions, have done so."  I wonder why that is.

AN INTERURBAN RETURNS TO HOME RAILS.

Well, a short stretch of rail close to its old home rails.

The Village of Villa Park is working with Illinois Prairie Path, labor unions and two railroad museums to give new life to a piece of west suburban transit history.

The Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad was an electrically powered interurban rail line that connected much of west suburban Kane, DuPage and Cook counties to the Loop. Passenger service operated between 1902 and 1957, and freight service ended two years later. Most of the railroad’s right of way, including the portion that went through Villa Park, was converted into the Illinois Prairie Path walking and biking trail.

Now, Villa Park plans to bring one of the old CA&E railcars, known as Car 321, to the former train station near the intersection of Ardmore Avenue and Central Boulevard. Union laborers would restore the exterior to its original condition and rehab that interior so it can be used to host community events. The village plans to build a short stub track to mount the railcar on, and a shed to protect it from the elements.

The Roarin' Elgin shut down late enough into the emergence of a railway preservation movement in these United States that there were interested buyers of cars for preservation, and its inability to attract sufficient capital to completely replace its fleet of wooden cars with steel cars meant a substantial roster of wood cars of relatively low scrap value were available to preservation enthusiasts.  At one time, the seven cars numbered 315-321 all remained in preservation.  Car 318 was the casualty of a rough shunt on Penn Central en route from Indiana to Wisconsin and became a parts donor to sister cars in the Illinois Railway Museum collection.  Car 315 is being rebuilt at the Rockhill Trolley Museum in Pennsylvania in closer to as-built condition, meaning revealing the stained-glass arched upper sash windows that many an interurban covered over to make the car look more streamlined, and Car 316 has received a similar backdating at the Fox River Trolley Museum.  Car 319 returned from an Ohio mobile home park to the Illinois Railway Museum a few years ago, and it often runs in the Roarin' Elgin wood car train.

GETTING OLD BEFORE THEY GET RICH?

A century before the United States declared its independence, the Chinese Emperor built his version of the Indian Treaty Room in a garden containing two lakes, the better to impress the barbarians with the power of the Middle Kingdom.  The complex remains as a site for state occasions, including China's president hosting Our President for a formal tea and conversation to wrap up their meetings.

Thirty years ago, I took this photo of Chinese youngsters working on their footie not far from the Great Hall of the People and the Maosoleum, which was closed for renovations at the time.

Sometimes barbarian political power comes on a sesame seed bun.

NOW DO HEALTH CARE.

The strong libertarian position on positive rights bestowed by government is that they involve the conscription of others.

In "The Impossibility of Endless, Cheap Gas," a Common Dreams contributor who majored in sociology grasps that point, at least in the special case of energy.  Yes, she starts with the recognition that oil is most likely an exhaustible resource (although the Hotelling price pattern that provides incentives to optimally conserve and to develop backstop technologies has not yet presented itself) she then acknowledges the labor of others.

Access to cheap fuel is not a right. It is a subsidy built on violence, both societal and environmental harm. The price of cheap oil is exploitation and death, including death of children and the destabilization of our climate, which all risk future generations’ viability on Earth. In the face of such consequences, surely we can do better.

It's asking too much for the lady to acknowledge the "exploitation and death" inherent in the mullahs looking the other way while infidel oil transited the Strait of Hormuz while the infidels looked the other way while the mullahs used their oil money to exploit their people and fund gangbangers masquerading as religious nationalists throughout Asia Minor.  It's certainly too much to point out that access to college, or medical services, or Doritos, is no more a right than access to cheap fuel is, nor that such access is also a subsidy built on violence.