@kenbazinet
Longtime DC scribe, covering three presidencies (DC is fine, but I prefer the United States). Reflections on democracy, First Amendment, Boston sports, and jam bands. Simple approach: trusted source intel + research & data + analysis = smart solutions.
Average price of gas is right now is $3.54 per gallon, AAA says.
That's up from $2.92 a gallon when Israel and the US started the Iran War on Feb. 28.
The White House mouthpiece doesn't know what she's talking about because not even Trump knows what he's going to do next, or how it will turn out.
It was the latter: Chris Wright was wrong.
Karoline Leavitt said at the White House briefing Wright's post was taken down because the U.S. did NOT escort a tanker through the Gulf of Hormuz kill zone.
Chalk it up to the fog of propaganda.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright deleted the post a short while ago without explanation.
Wright maybe upstaged the boss with news Trump might have liked to break? Then again it could just be another Trump administration screw up. They do appear to be rolling the dice on this one.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard has fast-attack craft, uncrewed surface vessels, speedboats, mini-subs, sea mines and even explosive-laden jet skis, said retired Royal Navy commander Tom Sharpe.
Iran likely capable of building about 10,000 drones a month, according to Centre for Information Resilience.
The mismatch between how fast chips improve and how long data centers take to build poses risk to entire AI infrastructure trade.
OpenAI is ending plans to expand a partnership with Oracle because it wants newer generations of Nvidia GPUs, a person familiar with the matter tells CNBC.
#AI
#Layoffs
Snubbing Ukraine's offer ranks as one of the biggest tactical miscalculations by the administration since the bombing of Iran began Feb. 28, two U.S. officials tell Axios.
"If there's a tactical error or a mistake we made leading up to this [war in Iran], this was it," a U.S. official acknowledged.
“This election will decide if New Mexicans can pay their bills each month, see a doctor when they’re sick, have a quality public education, and feel safe in their community,” Deb Haaland said in a statement, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.
#TrueBlue
“If you’re a tech journalist, you can go in. If you’re a climate journalist, you can also go in. If you cover business or energy or if you’re a very local journalist — there’s a story for you." www.niemanlab.org/2026/03/as-a...
Thune rejects Trump on SAVE Act: ‘The votes aren’t there for a talking filibuster’
A Republican congressman from Tennessee said that "Muslims don’t belong in American society."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries replied: "Disgusting Islamophobes like you do not belong in Congress or in civilized society."
Will check it out.
Also, need Dobes to be a wall tonight, for fantasy hockey purposes.
One of those that braved the Straight of Hormuz went “dark” by switching off its transponder and a second signaled it was Chinese owned and crewed, The Guardian reported.
The passage to the Persian Gulf would normally have about 100 vessels a day either exiting or entering the Gulf.
#ShortWar
Inside the administration, the intensive internal deliberations over the operation have focused on analyzing the risk of sending US naval assets into an active conflict zone, CNN reports.
However, one source described the current state of the Strait of Hormuz as “Death Valley.”
Trump says a lot of stuff, much of it these days dismissed as a load of horse hooey, but Wall Street nonetheless went gaga when he claimed war in Iran will be short.
Here's the thing, we're still waking up to higher gas prices today, and tomorrow, too. As for a short war, nobody knows. It's Trump.
Diesel is up nearly a dollar the past week to $4.78/gal., AAA reports.
"Before you can understand what is at risk, you have to be honest about how thin the recovery foundation was. The trucking industry did not recover in 2025. It survived," shipping news site FreightWaves said of Iran war fallout.
It’s a massive risk in a region that stretches from Kuwait to Qatar — an area of glittering high-rise buildings, posh beachfront resorts and booming commercial centers.
What the Gulf doesn’t have is a sophisticated oil clean-up industry and technology readily available in the US, CNBC reported.
After Trump's comments, it appeared as though an end to a military operation could be in sight, the BBC reported.
By evening, however, Trump was walking back those comments.
"We could call it a tremendous success right now," he said. "Or we could go further. And we're going to go further."
The significance of James Talarico’s run, our columnist David French writes, is “not the old news that a Christian can be progressive, but rather that Christian politicians can actually act like Christians.”
The average price of U.S. gasoline reached $3.48 a gallon, according to data from the AAA motor club. That is a nearly 17 percent increase since the first U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28. Gas hasn’t been at these levels since 2024, The Times reported.
#InflationNation
Some 67% of Americans - including 44% of Republicans and 85% of Democrats - expect gas prices to get worse over the next year, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows.
Sixty percent of Americans expect U.S. military involvement in Iran will "go on for an extended period of time," according to the poll.
“I thought that he was going to bring some of those things back,” Trump voter Francisco Castillo, a 43-year-old factory worker, said of Trump's promise of economic prosperity for MAGA.
“He said he was going to bring gas down, but the war in Iran is now making everything worse,” Castillo told AP.
“Another reasonable perception would be that if it is happening at this stage, the U.S. had not planned well for Iran’s response,” Philip Shetler‑Jones, senior research fellow for Indo‑Pacific Security at the Royal United Services Institute, a UK-based think tank, tells CNBC.
(War is ending soon?)
Deputy AG Todd Blanche promised to dump his crypto holdings no later than 90 days after his Senate confirmation last March.
But about a month into the job — before divesting — he ordered an end to investigations into crypto companies.
(Published Dec. 2025)
“It used to be that campaign websites would tell voters what candidates believe,” Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United, a liberal group that aims to limit the influence of money in politics, tells The Times. “Now they are a signaling apparatus to the wealthy special interests.”
#AI
Fox News apologized for airing archival video of a hatless President Donald Trump during coverage Sunday of his attendance at the dignified transfer ceremony for U.S. soldiers killed in the Middle East war.
“Obviously, the number is not zero, it’s not nothing,” Richard Frank, a senior fellow in economic studies and director of the Center on Health Policy at the Brookings Institution, told NBC News. “But what people are calling fraud are very often just bookkeeping errors.”
#GOPDeathCare
“Bottom line, it's an unprecedented amount of air pollution, and it’s scary,” said Lauren Mann, a resident of Walls, Mississippi, living about four miles away from the xAI power plant. “We all breathe the same air, and the pollution is not isolated to Southaven.”
Russia expanding military forces near NATO borders, threat assessment warns
Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Ky., died from injuries sustained during an enemy attack on March 1. Pennington was assigned to 1st Space Battalion, 1st Space Brigade, Fort Carson, Colo. www.stripes.com/branches/arm...
