Counting Heads 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀🚢 

War Chronicles:  We appear to have moved into the war of attrition phase of Trump’s Iran excursion.  There’s no question that the US has more military capability than the Iranians and has significantly damaged Iran’s military and infrastructure.  The challenge is that fueled by religious fervor, Iran’s leaders and the IRGC who are fighting for their lives and still have lots of missile capability, mines and small boats are convinced that despite Trump’s rhetoric, at some point he will declare victory and move on. As to that rhetoric yesterday Trump, who given current polls showing his approval ratings mired in the mid-thirties, knows that the specter of a prolonged war isn’t going over well on the homefront, responded to questions from reporters about his timeline by calling them stupid.  He went on to say “we were in Viet Nam for like 18 years, we were in Iraq for many, many years. I don’t like to say WW II, because that was a biggie. But we were four and a half almost five years in WW II.  We were in Korea for seven years.  I’ve been doing this for six weeks.”  Putting aside the inaccuracy of the historically challenged Trump’s timelines, comparing his Iran “excursion” to any one of those wars is probably not going to win him any popularity points.  On a more positive front, Trump announced yesterday that the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire has been extended by three weeks.  That’s good but ceasefires in and around Israel tend to be ephemeral, here today, gone tomorrow.  

Military Peeps:  Trump fired John Phelan, the Secretary of the Navy, or more accurately had Secretary of War/Beer Pete deliver the pink slip on his behalf.  On the one hand, firing the Secretary of the Navy during a Naval war seems a bit disruptive, on the other hand Phelan, whose chief qualification for the job was that he was one of Trump’s Mar a Lago cronies and a donor, wasn’t all that qualified for the position in the first place. Today’s NY Times reports that he was fired for failing to come up with a quickly implementable plan to get a least one of Trump’s super big, powerful, and full of bells and whistles golden battleships built by 2028. While it’s true that Phelan had made virtually no progress, it wasn’t really his fault as military experts say that it would be impossible to even finish the plans for Trump’s desired battleship on that timeline.  Moreover, they all believe that Trump’s golden battleship plans will be tabled the minute he leaves office.  Today’s NYT also reports that we are running out of critical munitions so maybe that’s what Trump should really be focused on but what’s the fun in that, perhaps another reason that yesterday Trump was off on another tangent discussing his marble choices and plans for his reflecting pool project. As to Phelan’s replacement, the new Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao doesn’t really seem all that qualified either although given his earlier remarks about how Monterey California has turned into a Wiccan hellscape, something that true Christians shouldn’t tolerate, his religious beliefs seem to fit in well with Pete Hegseth’s.  In other military personnel news, yesterday US Army Master Sgt Gannon Ken Van Dyke, one of the US special forces soldiers involved in the capturing of Venezuela’s Maduro, was arrested for betting $23,000 on Maduro’s removal on Polymarket before news of the raid was made public. His winnings totaled $409,000.  Now would be a good time for the DOJ to look into the reports of the rumored bets that others within Trump’s proximity have reported to have placed on some of his other TACO decisions because some people have been winning big on stock and energy market movements.

Headcounts:  Democratic Georgia Congressman David Scott, the civil rights advocate who was 80-year-old, died this week just one day after casting what turned out to be his final House vote. Scott is the fifth member of the House and fourth Democrat to die while in office this year. Reports are that 57-year-old New Jersey Republican Tom Kean Jr is still among the living, but the Congressman has been absent from the House since March 5.  His office says that Kean who is running for reelection in what is expected to be a hotly contested race is dealing with a personal matter but has provided no other information about his unspecified health problems or whereabouts.  Iowa’s 90-year-old Republican Senator Chuck Grassley who like the energizer bunny keeps going and going had gall bladder surgery over the weekend.  He reported via one of his typically quirky tweets that he’s recovering well and though he missed a key vote on DHS funding this week will be back soon. His vote or lack thereof was cancelled out by Virginia’s Senator Mark Warner absence. Democrat Warner who also missed the key DHS vote was out mourning the death of his 36-year-old daughter Madison who died this week from long term health complications related to her juvenile diabetes. Lots of sadness but also a reminder that with headcounts as close as they are, every vote matters, particularly in the House where revolts by disgruntled Republicans are common. To that end, Republicans have sued to prevent this week’s Virginia redistricting from going into effect.  A lower Virginia state court has put the redistricting on hold however it’s expected (hopefully) that a higher state court will rule in favor of the redistricting in a timely fashion.  Of course, Trump called the Virginia election a hoax, once again citing his favorite last minute “dumping” of ballots arguments while also saying that even a genius like him couldn’t understand the language in the redistricting amendment. A preview of what he’ll be saying about the midterms.              

More 💩:  RFK Jr testified in front of the Senate Health committee during the week.  He stuck with his usual obfuscation, misquoting studies and denying some of his earlier outrageous statements. Though he finally said that it would be a good idea for children to get the MMR vaccine, he continues to assert that vaccines have had little to do with the reductions in the incidence of childhood diseases, instead citing improvement in living conditions as the only reason that diseases have declined.  He said that even though some of the vaccines he dissed became available long after the improvements in living conditions and sewage treatment took place and the impact of the vaccines on disease reduction is clearly quantifiable.  He denied his earlier incredibly outrageous and racist statement that because all Black children are on ADHD medications they should be “reparented” and placed in special farms even when presented with transcripts of his despicable statements.  And to cap the week, the acting head of the CDC Jay Bhattacharya took the unprecedented step of cancelling the release of a CDC study that documented the efficacy of the COVID vaccine using the now familiar RFK era excuse that the study didn’t follow the “right” protocol. Right in this case meaning that it didn’t provide the answer that the anti-vaccine, anti-mRNA crowd wanted to see.