CLARIFYING THE NATIONAL STORY AT THE SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL.

In The (Not Detroit) Free Press, Akhil Amar contemplates the Federal Constitution.  It's worth reading his essay in full, as he takes stock of how people viewed that document at various previous milestone birthdays for American Independence.

Without a national story, will the country last another 50 years in anything like its current form? It is not, alas, a preposterous question as our deeply polarized nation experiences an upsurge of political violence and vituperation.

A "national story," like anything else that involves human interaction, is an emergent phenomenon.

So it was with American Independence.  Mr Amar observes, thinking about 1826, the good and the bad.

America was generally peaceful, prosperous, free, and self-governing. It was a land of regular elections, broad political participation (including jury service), peaceful transfers of power, orderly courtrooms, unrivaled newspaper circulation, robust entrepreneurship, brisk technological innovation, burgeoning centers of learning, and considerable religious freedom. It had no large standing armies in peacetime. Free folk from around the globe were starting to stream into the United States. The Constitution was succeeding.

And yet, America still had miles to go before it could sleep the sleep of the blessed. A horrendous system of race-based and rape-infused chattel slavery had deeply entrenched itself in the lower South. No dominant national movement had yet arisen to eliminate slavery in every inch of America. Native tribal peoples had often suffered cruel dispossession and worse, and would continue to suffer with little relief in sight.

Resolving those tensions, and many of those that followed, involved amendments to the Federal Constitution, as well as changes in the way Serious Thinkers viewed its role.

TOO EARLY TO PUT A PIN IN THIS.

A National Review fund-raising blurb opens, "The NFL draft has concluded and confirmed that the Jets are two years from a winning record, that the Bears still stink, and that the Packers will win the Super Bowl."  Whether that prompts Militant Normals in Packer Nation to open their wallets, or whether that will age like Philadelphia cream cheese, remains to be determined.  Apparently author Luther Abel owns a share of Packer stock.

In Packer Nation, the standard remains five titles in six attempts in eight seasons, and the special teams are a work in progress.

SAGE ADVICE FOR OUR TIME.

In Brussels Signal, Conrad Black offers a verdict that it might behoove the process-worshippers in the faculty common rooms to read and understand.

China is a challenge but not a rival and America’s ostensible allies are much less formidable than they were in the World Wars or even most of the Cold War. If Europe wishes to be taken seriously by the Americans, it has to act seriously and bring something to the party besides unction, loquacity, patronisation, and the compulsive will to appease America’s enemies.

For that consummation to be achieved, dear reader, it is essential that the coils of the anaconda continue to tighten.

What appears to be the last shot in the locker for the beleaguered and fragmented Iranian regime is the false claim that they control the Strait of Hormuz. The United States Navy could certainly convoy oil tankers through in approximately three 30-tanker convoys per day. They have the ships and aircraft necessary to assure reasonable safety and could put Marines on all ships to repel boarders and respond instantly to shore attacks and to the small craft of the Iranians that have so terrorised unescorted tankers. President Trump has already declined the belated offer of the Europeans, who need this oil, to assist in clearing the Strait. The United States doesn’t really need oil from this source and its lack of alacrity in reducing the price of oil for allies who would not allow the United States use of their own airspace and American bases in their country for the purposes of conducting this war, is understandable.

In his view, the mullahs might posture and puff in the way of men of Asia Minor, but it's likely for show for the benefit of their own subjects, but they won't do anything foolish.

The correlation of military forces now between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other is approximately a thousand to one, and any recourse to aggression against the United States by Iran would be so horrifying a mistake that even the blooded and divided fighting bull government of the Islamic Republic has eschewed it. The departure of the United Arab Emirates from OPEC also indicates that that country will assist in moderating the world oil price while Iran flounders to the end of this operetta of a war in which the principal terrorism-sponsoring country in the world and a relentlessly belligerent source of threats and outrages has been reduced to impotent mendicancy, all at a cost to the United States of eight battlefield fatalities and a non-combat accident in which five other servicemen died.

What has been most remarkable in the response of the West has been this sour grapes recognition that the United States does not need anything from NATO to achieve its international strategic goals.

All of which might be true, and yet now is not the time to go wobbly.

Turn over the fissile material and destroy the machinery of uranium enhancement.  Stop funding proxies throughout Asia Minor.  Compensate the Gulf Arab states for damages to their tourist infrastructure.  Recognize that the Strait of Hormuz is international waters.

YOU SAY YOU WANT SOME DEVOLUTION?

Reason's J. D. Tuccille gets to the heart of the matter.  "Government Shouldn't Be Important Enough To Fight Over."  Often it is, and his elaboration reinforces our stance on emphasizing the school board rather than the presidency.  He opens with a claim that might run counter to the sentiments in the Declaration of Independence about the Right of the People to alter destructive governments.

Government shouldn't be important enough to motivate people to kill others to gain control. Moreover, people willing to engage in violence to seize the means of governance have no business exercising political power. These are points we should be drumming home after the latest in a series of assassination attempts against President Donald Trump and other administration officials at a time of surging political violence in the United States.

You have to read through several paragraphs before it becomes clear his gripe is with Government from Washington.

The usual call, at this point, is for people to turn down the rhetoric. But that's pointless when Americans perceive that they're at risk from opponents who wield the vast power of government and plan to use it against them. That's not an irrational fear, and words aren't the danger here—the danger is government that reaches into all areas of life and which really is perilous in the hands of those motivated by malice.

"If in this country law has always been king, its empire has never been so expansive. More than ever, we turn to the law to address any problem we perceive. More than ever, we are inclined to use national authorities to dictate a single answer for the whole country," Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch and co-author Jane Nitze warned in a 2024 essay.

The "empire" that is "too expansive" is Government from Washington, and the discontents he invokes in getting to that assertion involve the national political parties treating slim governing majorities as an excuse to implement their most expansive policy wish-list, rather than as acting as a slightly more effective check on the implementations of the outgoing governing majority.  That, Mr Tuccille concludes, cannot end well.

At a time when Americans agree on so little—other than that they dislike each other—there are no "right" people to hold office and control the instruments of power. We've turned elections into existential threats to those who lose. We emphasized the "all" in "winner takes all," and we're paying the price.

Understandably fearful of government in the hands of enemies, Americans are literally fighting over political power. The violence won't stop, and will probably escalate, until there's no political danger worth fighting over.

Unfortunately, his essay ends there, rather than with a full-throated endorsement of enumerated, separated, and limited federal powers and an expansion of those policy decisions devolved to the several States and to the people.

AYATOLLAH-MAHT?

Victor Hanson suggests Iran's government has imploded.  It could be worse than that.  "It is one thing for the people to be ruled by globally feared autocrats armed to the teeth, but quite another to be governed by humiliated, now-impotent incompetents and buffoons."

Sooner or later, the mullahs' control over information in the country is going to run afoul of reality.  State radio can broadcast the latest demands they are making of Israel or the United States all they want.  Sooner or later the people might start asking "Where are those concessions from infidels?"  Probably just before they start asking "Where is rice at grocer?"  "When your country faces the prospect of hunger riots, you are not winning the war."

Turn over the fissile materials.  Stop funding proxies elsewhere in Asia Minor.  Compensate the Gulf Arab states for those damaged hotels.

Let the anaconda's coils tighten.

STOP ENABLING IRRESPONSIBILITY, YOU'LL GET LESS OF IT.

In Minding the Campus, Rebekah Wanic complains, "Too Many Dogs Are Eating Too Much Homework."  Nothing has changed in the twelve years (and counting) since I quit, and until the deanlets develop a spine, it will not get better.

Training students in learned helplessness, though, is how things now go on campus.

In a meeting last week, faculty members insisted that students today have more to contend with than any generation before them. I asked what they thought life was like for most Americans during World War II. The question was not well received.

The delusion must end. Expectations must rise if higher education is to remain relevant in preparing young people for life beyond graduation.

Well, of course her question went over about as well in faculty meeting as "Go Cubs Go" would on Chicago's South Side, and in the house organ for all wokeness, all the time, Jennie Young of Wisconsin at Green Bay argues that flexible expectations are best practice.

If I were to categorize the totality of student complaints I have heard and mediated over the years, I would estimate that nearly 90 percent are due to something other than the professor’s efficacy: The student misunderstood typical workload expectations, for example, or had biases that are manifesting as complaints. (Accent discrimination, for example, is a real thing.) For the remaining 10 percent of valid complaints, I believe 90 percent could have been prevented by following the 10 tips I’ve listed.

Among those ten tips? "Stop saying 'It's in the syllabus.'"  Good grief.  Generations of deanlets have recommended or mandated additional content that converts a straightforward schedule of topics and readings into a cluster of technicalities that would embarrass a transportation company explaining that booking a passage through the Strait of Hormuz comes with risks.  And now Jennie Young looks out on the world's largest fjord and says "never mind."

THE END FOR THE OLD INTERNATIONAL ORDER.

It might be long overdue, and it's not useful, and Fourth Turnings are supposed to be messy.  In "Power Play," Christopher J. Little faces reality.

The United States is engaged in titanic—and very risky—battles of its own, not on a rink but across the global stage. The liberal rules-based order that governed international behavior for the better part of seven decades is over. Not struggling. Not fraying at the edges. Over. The country is tired of policing the world while receiving debt and ingratitude in return. The majority voted for change, and the Trump administration has delivered it with a ferocity that has stunned allies and adversaries alike.

The north star is America First: put American interests—especially national security—ahead of the globalist commitments that hollowed out the middle class, offshored the industrial base, and left the Pentagon dependent on a rival power for critical supply chains. The 2026 National Defense Strategy puts it plainly: “Out with utopian idealism; in with hardnosed realism."

What looks like chaos—the tariffs, the strikes, the ultimatums, the Greenland threats, the trolling of Canada—is not chaos. It is a deliberate, historically grounded power play aimed at a single strategic objective: containing China’s rise before the window to do so closes permanently.

That's simultaneously intriguing and scary, which might be about right for a saecular order fracturing, with particular focus on containing Red China (which might: we'll revisit that another day, be getting old before it gets rich) while that is still possible.

What Trump is doing is not radical departure—it is a return to American roots. Alexander Hamilton built American industry behind tariff walls. The post-war era of open markets was the exception, not the rule. When it stopped serving American interests—when it hollowed out the industrial base and handed China the supply chains that underpin American military power—the model had to change. The tariffs are not primarily an economic instrument. They are a weapon: forcing American allies to stop trading with China on terms that sustain Beijing’s industrial and military expansion.

And before the real debt ceiling crashes in.

The U.S. government will not stop spending—no administration ever does—but if interest rates spike hard enough to make refinancing America’s debt load unmanageable, the entire strategic apparatus collapses. You cannot fund a military renaissance, an industrial revival, and a campaign against China if Treasury yields are blowing out and borrowing costs are crushing the economy.

It could be a time of glory, or of ruin.

Beneath the provocations and the bluster, there is a strategy—aimed at preventing China from achieving the kind of dominance that would make American power irrelevant for a generation. Whether it succeeds depends on factors no analyst can predict: the resilience of American institutions, the competence of execution, the choices of adversaries, and the tolerance of Americans for the short-term pain that any serious power play requires.

Intriguing, or scary?  You decide.

THE TIME FOR HECTORING IS PAST.

Red State's Brad Slager is on to the con.  "Hint: anytime a Democrat wants a 'conversation,' they intend to deliver a lecture, and you need to zip up your donut vacuum and listen."  Well, yes, and it's grown tiresome.

That's where Our President having none of the usual drive-by narrative is so refreshing.

"If I was a king would I be talking to you."  Classic.

CIVILIZATION, LOST.

Derek Thompson asks, "If America's So Rich, How'd It Get So Sad?"  My parents were born in the era of Coolidge Prosperity popularly known as the "Roaring Twenties," which perhaps were even better because the likes of William Shirer and George Gershwin thought the times so benighted they lit off for the Continent.  This century has featured what he, with an assist from Sam Peltzman (yes, he of the Peltzman Effect), calls the "Tragic Twenties."

Peltzman’s analysis is not a lonely voice; there is a veritable chorus of gloomy sentiment. This week, the Federal Reserve’s measure of US worker satisfaction fell to its lowest level since the survey began in 2014. One week prior, consumer sentiment had fallen to the lowest level ever recorded in the 70-year history of the University of Michigan economic survey. Once again, the index plunged around 2020 and, like a hiker on the far side of a mountain, continues down step by step. Americans are telling pollsters that they are more depressed about this economy than they were during the depths of the Great Recession or the painful stagflationary years of the 1970s.

His essay continues by suggesting that there's more than a little crying with your mouth full in that response.

But the moral might be more important than the material.

In the last 40 years, Americans have come to expect and prize affordability without even having to think about it. But in the last five years, prices for all sorts of things, including housing, have increased about three times faster than the rate Americans are used to; meanwhile, full employment has put upward pressure on the cost of services. The US public has responded by not only screaming at pollsters about their misery but also by rushing to the polls to vote out every incumbent who failed to do something about the “affordability” crisis of the 2020s. And Americans are not alone.

If civilization advances by expanding the set of things people can do without having to think about it, when that set shrinks, we might be looking at one civilization being lost, or perhaps at the saecular order fracturing.

It’s not just that Americans have lost trust in august, faraway institutions. Their faith in one another has suffered even more dramatic declines. For decades, the General Social Survey has asked Americans the same basic question: “Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or would they try to be fair?” In the 1970s and 1980s, Americans overwhelmingly agreed that other people are more or less trustworthy. That confidence in strangers has plummeted since 2020, according to Peltzman. The share of respondents who say other people are “fair” has declined by even more than overall happiness.

Those grey swans are circling.

American sadness this decade has been forged by the fact of, and the feeling of, a permanent unrelenting economic crisis, amplified by a uniquely negative news and media environment, and exacerbated by the rise of solitude and the declining centrality of trusted institutions. Inflation has made today’s life harder to afford, while the ambient awareness of other people’s triumphs on social media had made tomorrow’s success feel harder to achieve. The ongoing collapse of confidence in the establishment has made Americans feel unusually adrift and dissatisfied with institutions outside of their control, while the chosen self-isolation of modern life has demolished communal trust, as we increasingly experience other people’s minds through the toxic surreality of our screens rather than through the embodied reality of strangers who are, for the most part, just as nice as we are.

Will that saecular entropy be reversed?  Fourth Turning types say no.  If not, what comes first, ekpyrosis or the return of the twelfth imam, or perhaps Barbarossa's beard winding around the table?

WILL GOING THROUGH BE THE ONLY WAY OUT?

Over the years, Kurt Schlichter has maintained that leftists, and their willing accomplices in the liberal establishment, want those annoying Normals dead.  In the wake of a Democrat loyalist attempting to go kinetic at the weekend's nerd prom, he's repeating that message.

We are getting uncomfortably close to how the Spanish Civil War was started. That war was started because the communists started losing their power. We need to realize what time it is and the threats that we face. The only reason why the Left calls Trump "Hitler" and Republicans fascists is to give others permission to take him and us out. The fight against evil will continue, and I'm not sure it will end well.

His colleague Ward Clark is thinking along similar lines, although he might be thinking about a general strike of some sort, repeating "They need us. We don't need them."  That's interesting, as May Day is coming up, and the communists are organizing their own version of a general strike for that day, although it will probably be mostly kids in the schools that produce the next generation of welfare recipients reinterpreting truancy as some sort of political action participating.  He also echoes John Galt in suggesting that perhaps scorning the productive give their detractors what they want, by going away.  But rather than holing up in Galt's Gulch, he might have something more kinetic in mind.  "If the left wants to normalize political violence, and if they succeed, they aren't going to like how that works out. In any conflict sparked by such a move, the left will lose, suddenly and catastrophically, within a matter of days — maybe hours. Why? Because when it comes to a scrap, as with almost anything else, we are just simply better at it than they are."

A former Bernie Sanders booster called Batya Ungar-Sargon, suggests that the chap who disrupted nerd prom was simply acting on what his Intellectual Betters were saying.

Democrats have blamed gun violence for the rise in political violence, which is of course ridiculous, given that conservatives are much more likely to own guns, yet much less likely to engage in and justify political violence.

It’s time for the Left to take responsibility for the violence it is fomenting, justifying, and carrying out. Cole Allen’s manifesto justifying his attempted murder of the President doesn’t read like the ravings of a lunatic. It sounds like the kind of rhetoric you hear every single day from Democrats and their media. They are radicalizing their side every single day, and refusing to take down the temperature.

There are similar assertions circulating elsewhere in the right-populist internet environment these days.  She concludes, "You can’t unite around a lie."  The lie, though, might be that the usual forms of government are working as they should.  Outside the Beltway's James Joyner, who knows a few things about conflict, develops that argument.

We have increasingly cast our politics as existential. Every presidential election in my lifetime has been “the most important presidential election in our lifetimes.” And, as the parties have polarized and sorted, the stakes have certainly increased: every election is a referendum on the future of race relations, gay rights, trans rights, abortion rights, gun rights, etc.

At the same time, the safety valve that deligitimates violence in a democracy—elections—have become increasingly meaningless. Gerrymandered House seats mean few of the 435 districts are truly in play; the winner of the dominant party’s primary is all but assured of election. This is true for the Senate and Electoral College in all but a handful of states. So, for all practical purposes, most Americans have no real say come Election Day.

And that’s to say nothing of the counter-democratic, if not outright undemocratic, features that have been bolted onto the system. Voter suppression efforts by state legislatures to further skew outcomes. The routine use of the filibuster has made it almost impossible to pass legislation. A Supreme Court with an extreme partisan skew that tends to strike down policies enacted by Democrats at a much higher rate than those enacted by Republicans.

Violence is a tool of the powerless. And more and more people feel powerless.

Pay attention, though, to where the power is accreting.  Presidential elections.  Federal policies.  National legislation.  Perhaps, in place of widespread defiance of Our Political Masters, or gunplay replacing wordplay, a restoration of those enumerated, separated, and limited powers matters.  Perhaps, instead of asking "who is John Galt?," dear reader, ask "who is running for school board or mayor" and "what is she proposing?"

PAIN FOR THE MULLAHS, NOT AT THE PUMP.

Let's set the Wayback Machine to August 2003.

The University's press liaison just rang, asked if I would speak with a reporterette about gas prices. Here's the fieldwork I did: nominal and real gasoline prices to 1997, and an inflation calculator. When you see unleaded regular at $2.73 a gallon (I'm not sure how the Energy Information Administration treats taxes) give me a holler. For an exercise, plot the size of a passenger truck against the price series you see.

In those days, Blogger did not have image embedding capabilities, which we now have.  Adjusting for inflation, when you see unleaded regular at around $6.00 a gallon, and again, my disclaimer about accounting for taxes applies, give me a holler.

That's a screen capture from an Energy Information Administration series, and the agency publish additional inflation-adjusted price series.

SUBURBANIZATION IS A SOCIALIST DISASTER.

That might not be what Grant Ennis, Brent Toderian, and Tom Flood had in mind when they wrote "The One-Hour City Conspiracy" for Streetsblog, positing "Too many people are forced into car-dependent lives, with more health harms, more crashes, more noise, more air pollution, more social isolation — and less space for everything good our streets should be giving us."

Read on, though, and note Your Tax Dollars at Work (I remember the signs hailing the a-building next section of Interstate 94 in that way) with Technocratic Overreach and Government Spending as far as you can pedal a bike.

PRIZE AND BOOTY.

Maritime law features all sorts of interesting terminology.  The most familiar pairing might be flotsam and jetsam.  At law, how that stuff wound up in the water (loosely, floated off as opposed to jettisoned) determines who has the right to retrieve it.

Now contemplate, with or without a dead-man's chest and a bottle of rum, prize and booty.

Prize law is the body of maritime law and the law of armed conflict that applies to captured neutral or enemy merchant vessels. Prize law applies to civilian merchant vessels, distinct from enemy warships or aircraft, which automatically become booty of war when captured. Prize law only applies during armed conflict, making it distinct from routine maritime interdictions or sanctions enforcement, which can occur outside armed conflict and are not necessarily belligerent acts. Eight specific grounds make a neutral state’s vessel capturable, including breaching a blockade, carrying contraband, and resisting visit and search. Contraband consists of goods destined for an enemy of a belligerent and susceptible to use in armed conflict, a definition that was has not been broadly applied since World War II. According to U.S. policy, a blockading state has the right to stop vessels bound to or from blockaded ports anywhere on the high seas and apply prize law. Although the U.S. has recently interdicted other Iran-linked vessels outside the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. has invoked maritime interdiction and sanctions enforcement for those interdictions, not for blockade violations.

The law has developed over the years and it isn't as simple as putting Marines on the bridge and steering a course for a friendly port.

Once vessels are captured, they can be escorted to a port under belligerent jurisdiction for inspection and adjudication by a prize court. That court would determine whether the capture was lawful. If so, the court may condemn the vessel and cargo as prize, and award title to the capturing state.

Meanwhile, back at the Strait of Hormuz, a few ships might be moving, but free movement by ships from or for Gulf Arab ports isn't happening.

Maritime activity across the Strait of Hormuz and adjacent corridors is showing early signs of recovery, but under sustained enforcement pressure and continued sanctions-driven disruption.

Transit volumes rebounded on April 25 following several days of suppressed movement, with all crossings conducted under full AIS visibility. At the same time, U.S. enforcement activity expanded beyond the Gulf, highlighted by the interception of a sanctioned LPG tanker in the Arabian Sea.

Iranian export infrastructure continues to operate under strain. Kharg Island shows active loading alongside a growing anchorage queue, indicating throughput pressure rather than a full recovery in export flow.

Across the system, vessel behavior reflects a controlled reopening environment, where movement is resuming, but under active monitoring, enforcement risk, and persistent sanctions pressure.

The article notes increased open and clandestine transit of the strait, without disaggregating Gulf Arab traffic that enjoys freedom of transit once clear of the area from Iranian traffic subject to U. S. enforcement anywhere at sea.

As far as effects on the price of gasoline, Stephen "Vodka Pundit" Green notes,  "Sure, nobody likes paying four bucks for gas, although $5 gas under Joe Biden would be $5.75 in today's dollars. But as Robin Brooks noted this weekend on Substack, 'the current physical shortage of oil was entirely predictable and got priced long ago.'"

We'll take stock of the motor fuel prices another day.

CHERNOBYL WAS A COMMUNIST DISASTER.

Reason's Ron Bailey recalls the corner-cutting that led to the failed emergency test that destroyed a nuclear reactor.

The world's worst nuclear disaster began 40 years ago at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, when Unit 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power generation facility experienced an explosion and meltdown. Ironically, the explosion was caused by a botched safety test.

The point of the test had been to see what would happen if the power plant lost its main electrical supply: Could spinning turbines generate enough power to run the coolant pumps until emergency backup diesel generators could kick in? The experiment had failed three times previously, but never as catastrophically as it did that night.

Before the meltdown, Soviet officials had bragged regularly about the safety of their nuclear power plants and disparaged those in the West.

Oops.  It transpires, dear reader, that the only thing more destructive than capitalist cost-cutting, which presented a few years earlier in the form of exploding Pintos, was communist cost-cutting.

The Soviet system put economic decisions in the hands of planners far removed from both the data people need to make decisions and the immediate consequences of their actions. Gosplan, the economic planning bureau, initially determined that nuclear power was unnecessary because the country had more than enough fossil fuels to produce electricity. When it became clear in the late 1960s that they had miscalculated, the energy planners rushed the development of nuclear power. In the process, they neglected to include the containment buildings used in the West, which are designed to prevent the escape of radioactive materials even during severe accidents.

Containment, you see, would have increased the costs of the plants by 25 percent to 30 percent. The "leaders of the Soviet energy sector faced a choice between disrupting the Party's five-year development plan if they built expensive nuclear facilities or abandoning the project altogether," a group of Russian researchers noted in 2025 (originally in Russian). "Priority was given to the solution that was safe for the officials, but which subsequently created a threat to people's lives." After the disaster, an IAEA engineer told the Los Angeles Times that if the Chernobyl reactor had been housed within a standard Western-style containment structure, "it probably would have made a huge difference." Even if an explosion breached a containment structure, most of the radioactive particles would nevertheless have been trapped.

The Soviet nuclear power industry was plagued by shoddy workmanship, bureaucratic infighting, and a shortage of trained personnel.

"Close enough for government work."  Unfortunately, clean nuclear power was collateral damage to the demonstration of the follies of communism.

NO SALE.

Shortly after Our President kept his negotiators home and let whoever is in charge in Iran know they could call at any time, somebody in that wreck of a government offered a new price on an old rug.  "Iran offers to reopen Strait of Hormuz if US lifts its blockade and the war ends, officials say."

Sierra-squared, delta-squared.

Iran offered to end its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. lifts its blockade on the country and ends the war in a proposal that would postpone discussions on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, two regional officials said Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump seems unlikely to accept the offer, which was passed to the Americans by Pakistan and would leave unresolved the disagreements that led the U.S. and Israel to go to war on Feb. 28.

That's a non-starter.  It's really simple: until Iran turns over the fissile material, stops funding religious gangbangers throughout Asia Minor (has anybody noticed they don't fund a Uighur militia?) and compensates the Gulf Arab countries for damage to their hotels and casinos, the anaconda's coils continue to tighten, and perhaps there are a few bridges on a new railway to China that might disappear.

IT'S TORNADO SEASON.

Model railroad swap meet season is winding down, as later sunsets and warmer temperatures draw people out of their basements.  One of the final shows of the year in the North West Frontier is the Depot Stove Gang show at Lena-Winslow High School.  The traders run heavily to secondhand HO scale trains, as well as Lionel and American Flyer.  The show offers a convenient excuse to patronize a local craft brewery that knows how to make lagers and stouts.

It's probably a good thing this sort of craft project wasn't a thing when I was in kindergarten or elementary school as I would be tempted to add a dome or two to each of those tank cars.

School administrators are comfortable enough with the traditional forms to post advice in the lunch room.

You'd think some of those things would go without saying.  Such, though, are the times we live in.

And now the students, and their teachers, and the support staff, have a new challenge.  "Lena-Winslow School District prepares to go back to school after devastating tornado."  That storm hit Friday a week ago, as students were gathering for a concert.

Part of the school’s roof was ripped off during Friday’s storm, causing damage and leaving students and staff sheltering inside.

Band director Renee Schultz says dozens of students were already in the building for a music event when the weather quickly turned.

She says the moment the tornado hit was intense.

“It felt like the building got picked up and sucked up,” said Schultz. “There was a pressure change and then it was like how people describe it, like a freight train and the doors shaking and all of that.”

Despite the damage, no one was hurt. Superintendent Tom Chiles says students and staff responded quickly and professionally.

“Their reaction to the whole situation couldn’t have been any better,” said Chiles. “I thought our adults handled it really well and then the kids listened to those directions very well and that’s why we didn’t have any injuries.”

The storm left visible damage to the building, including the stage area and parts of the roof.

Chiles hosted an open house Wednesday which allowed families to walk through the school, ease some anxiety and feel more comfortable after what many describe as a traumatic experience.

“I just felt it was important that if kids really did feel a lot of trauma, to have mom or dad with them when they got back into the same space again,” explained Chiles.

One parent says their six-year-old daughter was at school when the twister hit.

“So, we wanted to make sure to stop back in and make sure she was good to go, and it looks like so far so good,” said Morgan Howe a parent at Lena-Winslow School District.

Chiles says repairs will take time and could be costly, but much of the building has already been secured and cleared for students to return.

The kids listened when the adults talked, and that made tornado day less bad than it could have been.  Classes resumed Thursday.  If the Depot Stove Gang announce tornado relief efforts we'll let you know.

ANOTHER LOST WEEKEND IN ISLAMABAD.

Pakistan's government, which might be acting as agent for what passes as Iran's government, is hosting another round of discussions between Abbas Aragchi, who is touring several capitals including Moscow, and Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Red State's "Captain Ed" Morrissey isn't expecting much.

Pakistan isn't part of the US-Israel war with Iran, and except for a couple of attempts in the early days, it has not been the recipient of Iranian retaliation, unlike the experiences of Iran's Persian Gulf neighbors. Pakistan has good relations with the US – not as good as those GCC states, but warm enough, especially after Trump brokered a peace agreement after war briefly broke out between Pakistan and India.

Araghchi doesn't need "consultation" with Islamabad to know what steps Iran has to take to end the war. They have to surrender their highly enriched uranium (HEU), end support for terror proxies, renounce their illegal claim to sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiate missile limits with Israel and the countries in the Abraham Accords. Araghchi's problem is that he doesn't have any power to negotiate on any of those points, because the IRGC has depantsed him publicly and made sure everyone knows he's an impotent boob with an airplane at his disposal, and that's all.

Araghchi likely knows that Trump won't extend the ceasefire as another favor to Pakistan.

As we wind down the business week, the Captain has correctly spelled out United States' war aims.  Israel's government might have additional aspirations, and their ongoing negotiations with Lebanon's government to crack down on Hezbollah provide an additional list of items for negotiations.  In addition, the Gulf Arab states might want to hang onto some of the Iranian money laundered through Gulf Arab banks to cover repairs to their hotels and airports.

As far as moving cargo for and from Gulf Arab ports, neither the United States Navy nor their European nor Indian nor Japanese counterparts have yet organized convoys or escorts.

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.