I’m reading his assessment of the Iran War to date (you should too, depressing as it is), and feeling the same despair I think he is. This is a massive clusterfuck with no good outcome, but Marcus makes a prediction anyway.

Prediction: the US won’t lose. Because the Iranians don’t have the logistics or means to reach us. We’ll declare victory and head home for a ticker-tape parade, etc. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv will get as flattened as Gaza. I’m not sure how I feel about that, so I have been employing a trick I have used for years, which is simply not to feel. My, how interesting. Israel finally managed to talk the US into attacking Iran for them, and it’s the most incompetent thing anyone has ever seen. That’s the problem with hiring stupid people. The US won’t lose, Iran won’t lose, but Israel is fucked – unless they can convince the US to help pay for their repairs. Which is so absurd, I ought to expect it. The economic impact of repairing the damage Israel has suffered is incalculable. In a rational world, this would actually be the end of Israel because most of the population would fuck off back to Poland, Ukraine, Germany, and Russia where they came from, “Well that didn’t work.” To me, this is one of the crazy things about politics: in a semi-rational world, that would actually be a possibility: 95% of Israel ups and quits, and the remainder go “time we learn to negotiate, huh?” The Israelis have thoroughly imploded their own myth that their government is tough and savvy. That might be good for them to realize.

That sounds about right. As we have so many times before, we’ll devastate a country and pretend we’ve won a great victory. It’s an interesting idea that maybe, finally, Israel has bit off far more than it can chew. We’re also sending in 2000 marines — I’m not sure what they can do against a population of 93 million riled up people with AK47s and missiles, but that sounded familiar, too.

I’ve read all the Flashman novels. They’re sitting on a bookshelf in my living room right now. In case you’re unfamiliar, they’re comedic historical novels about the rise of the British empire, centered on a character who is a bully and a self-serving poltroon who serves in all the major 19th century conflicts in Asia, Africa, North America, and even has a few escapades in Europe. He’s always a hair’s breadth from total disaster, but manages to pull through at the last moment, often at the cost of thousands of lives, including those of his fellow British soldiers.

Marcus is not a Flashman-like figure, but he does remind me sometimes of George McDonald Fraser, the author of the series, who is sitting back describing the horrors of these wars with some detachment. One of the themes of the books is the devastating incompetence of the British leadership, who can rescue their reputations by sending in masses of young men who will be ruined and wrecked by the experience, but can be praised by the generals as Heroes of the British Empire, who themselves escape scot-free and go home to their manors to sip brandy and tell war stories.

Pete Hegseth is setting up a few thousand noble sacrifices. You won’t be able to criticize him without besmirching the memory of the gallant marines who gave their all for their country, he thinks.

Marcus has also written a letter he would like to slip into the mailboxes of his neighbors who previously festooned their homes with Trump signs, since mysteriously taken down because they’re all chickenshits. It’s a good letter, honest and forthright, but I’d urge him not to post it. It sounds like a death threat to all Trump supporters. I agree with it — they’re all traitors and are responsible for everything our country might once have stood for — but this is not the time. They still have too much power. We need to tear down the right-wing establishment, and then we can bring their lackeys to a terrible justice.

Or more likely, like Flashman, they’re going to end up rich and praised, telling stories about grand victories that will be resolved by another century of idiocy.

The US has depleted its Middle East defense systems to the point where they are stripping Asian defense systems, particularly in South Korea.

South Korean media has reported several flights of U.S. military transport aircraft at Osan Air Base since the Iran conflict started, noting that the C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster planes that were seen are used to typically carry Patriot systems and THAAD anti-ballistic missile systems.

The U.S. move to deploy Patriot defense systems in South Korea to the Middle East comes against the backdrop of reports that air defense systems used by Gulf nations were running “dangerously low” on interceptors to defend against Iranian drone and missile strikes.

IISS’ Kim said that U.S. missile supplies are already under significant strain, given that Iran continues to retaliate and the conflict is likely to be a prolonged one.

Interesting and worrisome. Then I realized, though, that I have an inside source that could give me fresh, juicy information. My son is a major in the signal corps, which handles all this tech and logistics stuff, and he’s stationed in Korea. They’re also in the middle of a huge joint exercise in the Pacific called Freedom Shield 26, in which he’s putting in long days coordinating various aspects of the exercise. He’d know about any strains and shifts in the conduct of the drill, and I know him well, and he even called me on my birthday. The perfect opportunity to get breaking news!

So I asked him about it. He stonewalled me about it. Me! His own father! He wouldn’t reveal a single tiny secret, not even as a birthday present.

Maybe it’s because he sounded really tired and overworked, and because he was calling at 4am Korean time just before he started another long day, but I couldn’t get him to crack. I also didn’t try very hard, since if true, I imagine having big chunks of the military infrastructure yanked out from under one of the guys in charge of deploying said infrastructure in the middle of a multi-national exercise is a bit of a headache.

He’s a good boy. Don’t bother trying to extract info from him.

Trust me, I know that correlation is not causation, but damn, that is one sharp coincidence.

This corrupt Supreme Court has a lot to answer for. That graph comes from Paul Krugman

Amid the bloody shambles, one big question is, who put The Gang That Couldn’t Think Straight in power? In an immediate sense, Trump was put over the top by low-information voters — defined by G. Elliott Morris as voters who don’t know which party controls Congress. But the groundwork for the MAGA takeover was laid well before by the Roberts Supreme Court and by right-wing billionaires that the court enabled.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Billionaires Gone Wild, the extraordinary influence acquired by a tiny group of ultra-wealthy men. I shared this chart on campaign contributions, based on estimates from Americans for Tax Fairness.

That data explains a lot about the current state of the nation.

So if you want to understand how this country has degenerated to such a state, how we can be spending nearly $2 billion a day attacking Iran without a clear endgame in sight, while children go without healthcare, nursing homes are understaffed because their workers have been deported, home electricity bills skyrocket due to data centers, consider who benefits and who isn’t hurt.

This is a billionaire’s war, waged at everyone else’s expense.

How many billionaires, or even millionaires, are actually serving in the military right now or are even luxuriating in a hotel somewhere near where the missiles might fall? How many will be materially hurt by a rise in gas prices, the destruction of reliable information sources, the lack of availability of vaccines or healthy food?

If you can’t tell who the winners and losers are, you’re one of the losers.

Think about this truth.

Anyone who wants to defend our war with Iran needs to justify the expense. The NSF provides a material benefit, discovers new knowledge, and enhances the reputation of our country. It is a net advantage to support the NSF; you could reasonably argue for a different kind of positive investment, an argument that goes on in congress all the time while they hash out the yearly budget.

The Iran war, on the other hand, is an illegal action triggered by one lunatic executive without congressional approval, that is destructive of human life and property, and does not succeed in it’s stated goal of reducing threats to Americans and others. For my selfish fellow citizens, it’s also going to raise the cost of oil. It’s also a war we cannot win, and that’s just the beginning of an escalation that will make that $11.3 billion look like a bargain.

It is a no-brainer to choose between those two alternatives.

Also, it wasn’t long ago that the president raged at a few congresspeople who put out an ad stating that soldiers don’t need to follow illegal orders. That ad did not go far enough. We need to pull a few generals into a courts martial and explain to them that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally tell you to launch your missiles at civilian citizens of a country we are not at war with. You must first be informed by congress that you are at war, which is the minimal requirement before military action can be triggered. Learn to tell the president to shut the fuck up and get authorization first.

The officers that ordered the pushing of the buttons are war criminals, and that’s how history will regard them.

WTF? Who is this Erika Kirk weirdo, other than the Charlie Kirk’s widow and a former Miss Arizona? She’s now going to be in charge of Turning Point USA, which is great — she’s going to eventually kill the organization, so more power to her. But now…

Donald Trump has appointed Erika Kirk, the widow of murdered rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, to a key advisory board of the US Air Force Academy.

No mention of her qualifications or why she was even considered for the position. It’s just part of Trump’s general policy of packing all kinds of positions with clowns, incompetents, and grifters. Look who else is serving on this advisory board:

Other people appointed by the president in March 2025 include the Republican Alabama US senator Tommy Tuberville, and Dina Powell, who was deputy national security adviser for strategy during the first Trump administration.

A number of Congress members from both parties make up the bulk of the rest of the panel, which includes two other Republican US senators elevated by John Thune, the chamber’s majority leader; they are Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, named recently as Trump’s pick to replace the fired homeland security secretary Kristi Noem.

In other words, the Air Force Academy is simply a dumping ground for every failed twit in the Republican party. They claim that their role is to inquire “into the morale, discipline, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods and other matters” of the Colorado Springs military training facility,” whatever that means. The clue, though, is Colorado Springs, the notorious center of televangelist/religious nutjobbery in the country.

I know that Candace Owens is spinning a whole set of conspiracy theories about Kirk. I don’t need to hear about them.