Thoughts for the Day, April 8, 2026: One Shining Moment for the Michigan Wolverines

The rescue was heroic, but it was not the Resurrection.

National Champion

With their 69-63 victory over Connecticut on Monday, the Wolverines cemented their place as the best team in U of M’s history. The 1989 team was great, with two first round draft picks, but it did not have the depth and versatility of this team. Here is why they are the best Michigan team ever.

• · The nation’s top defense, which really showed in Monday’s win.

• · Top six in effective field-goal efficiency on offense and defense

• · The nation’s top five offense.

• · The nation’s top four in 2-point shooting percentage on offense and defense

• · The nation’s top three in blocks.

• · The nation’s top thirty in 3-point percentage, which was their one perceived weakness.

• · The first Final Four team that featured eight players averaging at least 18 minutes and seven points per game.

• · Each one of the eight players led the team in scoring in at least one game this season.

• · Nimari Burnett, who scored a season-high 31 points against Penn State in February, ranked seventh in scoring among team members.

• · The most wins (36) in a single season for a M basketball team.

• · The first team in B1G history with 19 regular season league wins in a single B1G season.

• · The first team in B1G history with 10 regular season road wins in a single B1G season.

• · They went 37 of 40 at the free-throw line in their two Final Four games.

• · They held each of the last four teams they played in the tournament to each team’s lowest shooting percentage of the season. They proved that defense wins championships.

The Wolverines get my Orchid of the Day

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Honesty on National Television

When CBS reporter Tracy Wolfson asked Michigan’s All-American Yaxel Lendeborg how he felt heading to the locker room, the Michigan star did not hold back. ‘I feel awful. I feel super weak right now,’ he stated bluntly. ‘I can’t make anything, oh man. I am trying to push through because you know, it is a championship game and all that…I am missing plays I don’t usually miss. I’ve had many opportunities to take advantage of defending, haven’t been able to do it. I’ve got to go out there and give it my best. I played really soft in this first half. I’ll be way better second half.’

This is coming from a person who was not expected to play and ended up playing 36 minutes, scoring 13 points, playing point-forward when point guard Elliot Cadeau was sitting because of foul trouble, and leading the full court press on defense which held Connecticut to its lowest shooting percentage of the season.

It is my Quote of the Day

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Like the resurrection? I don’t think so.

I was elated to hear that both pilots who were shot down on Friday were rescued by Sunday. I love the fact that our military will not leave anyone behind.

What happened on Friday and Sunday with the rescues was heroic, as many armed service members put their lives on the line to save fellow service members who were injured and behind enemy lines. These are actions that earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, or Distinguished Service Crosses, etc.

However, I would never once think any such rescue compares to the Resurrection, which is the basis for Christianity.

Per the NY Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday likened the rescue on Easter Sunday of a missing American airman shot down over Iran to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In his account of the rescue operation, Mr. Hegseth drew parallels between the airman’s ordeal and the account of Christ’s death and Resurrection given in the Bible.

The F-15E fighter jet, he noted, was “shot down on a Friday — Good Friday.” That is the day Jesus was crucified.

After the airman bailed out over Iran, he hid, Mr. Hegseth said, “in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday,” reminiscent of the tomb cut into a rock in which Jesus was buried.

Then, he said, the airman was rescued on the day Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus — “flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday.”

“A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing,” the defense secretary said. “God is good.”

Mr. Hegseth also said that after the plane was shot down, the airman, the F-15E’s weapons systems officer, made contact with his American rescuers with a religious message: “God is good.” “In that moment of isolation and danger,” he said, “his faith and fighting spirit shone through.”

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Budgeting for going after dissent

From Mary Geddry on Tuesday: Ken Klippenstein published deeply alarming reporting on what looks like the Trump administration’s latest attempt to turn the federal government into a political pre-crime machine.

Buried in the FY 2027 FBI budget request is a newly created FBI-led “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center,” established under Trump’s September 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 and staffed by personnel from 10 federal agencies. Its job, according to the budget language, is to integrate intelligence, operational support, and financial analysis to “proactively identify” domestic terror networks and help prosecute them…the ideological markers associated with this so-called threat include “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” support for overthrowing the U.S. government, “extremism on migration, race, and gender,” and hostility toward “traditional American views” on family, religion, and morality.

…The real danger here is that the administration is not confining its focus to actual criminal conduct. It is smearing dissent, cultural disagreement, and ideological opposition with the language of terrorism, which creates a ready-made excuse for surveillance, infiltration, financial scrutiny, watch-listing, and intimidation. The budget language also fixates on social media, smaller websites, and encrypted chat apps as pathways to radicalization, because apparently using the internet while not being a MAGA crank is now something the FBI would like to put on a flowchart.

Klippenstein places this in a broader pattern under FBI Director Kash Patel, including a dramatic increase in domestic terrorism investigations…. He also notes that administration figures have already shown a habit of hyping shaky or outright bogus domestic terror narratives, only to quietly backpedal later after the damage is done. Which is why this budget language is so sinister: it suggests that mindset is no longer just rhetorical froth from the usual authoritarian loudmouths but is being formalized into the federal bureaucracy itself. This does not mean dissent has literally been outlawed on paper. It does mean anti-capitalist, anti-racist, pro-migrant, feminist, anti-authoritarian, or simply non-MAGA views can be folded into a framework designed to treat belief as suspicion and suspicion as justification for state scrutiny… I might fall into one or more of these categories.

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If he starts attacking civil infrastructure, what’s the difference between Trump and Putin.

Also from Mary Geddry: Once Trump starts threatening the same kind of attacks on civilian infrastructure that the West has denounced as barbaric in Ukraine, he stops looking like a democratic leader using rough language and starts looking like yet another strongman who views civilian suffering as leverage. It is a moral indictment.

Trump posted (on Tuesday) one of the most deranged and openly authoritarian statements of the conflict so far: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!” It was the language of apocalypse delivered like reality TV promotion: mass death as spectacle, regime change as a punchline, and the destruction of an entire society treated as a possible prelude to something “revolutionarily wonderful.” This is a man fantasizing about annihilation while pretending to bless the people who would suffer under it.

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My head is spinning

Since last night when President Trump announced a two-week cease fire in the bombing of Iran, my head is spinning. No one seems to know the status of the alleged two-week cease fire. Different answers come from all directions. None of the major players are singing from the same song sheet.

Fortunately, we have not yet wiped out the Iran civilization. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

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Contact your Congressperson

Contact your congressman by following these easy steps This can be done in a few easy steps.

Step 1: find your congressman by clicking on this link, Find Your Representative | house.gov

Step 2: Put your zip code in the proper space.

Step 3: Click the button “find your representative””

Step 4: In the new page that comes up you will see a picture of your congressman. Click on your congressman’s name under the picture.

Step 5: In the new page that comes up, Click on Contact Me at the top of the page and then click on Email me.

Step 6: Fill out the information as required.

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Quote of the Day: See above from Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg

Orchid of the Day: One more time. The University of Michigan’s men’s basketball team for a season like no other. Congratulations on your national championship.

Onion of the Day: The cease fire. It doesn’t seem to be holding.

Question of the Day: Will the cease fire hold?

Lyrics of the Day:

She’s got eyes of the bluest skies
As if they thought of rain
I’d hate to look into those eyes
And see an ounce of pain

Her hair reminds me of a warm, safe place
Where as a child I’d hide
And pray for the thunder and the rain
To quietly pass me by

Hint: It starts with one of the greatest guitar riffs of all-time

Lyrics of the Day for April 6, 2026. Simple Man by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Video of the Day:

One Shining Moment | 2026 March Madness

I write reflective, opinionated essays on leadership, politics, sports, and life—grounded in experience rather than ideology. If this perspective resonates with you, you can subscribe here for free.