Greetings! Meh. That was my reaction to Donald Trump’s primetime pitch for his war with Iran.  It was a rehash of conflicting statements on the conflict’s goals and when it’s going to end, sprinkled with his usual boasts and empty promises. Even worse, he broke into prime time TV with his 19-minute sales speech….Dept. of Sticks & Stones: Looks like Bruce Springsteen’s anti-Trump onstage diatribes during the Minneapolis kickoff of his “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour are getting to the prickly POTUS. This morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that Springsteen looks like “a dried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon.” Hollywood in Toto joins The Boss bashing, although the pub’s publisher Christian Toto attacks Springsteen’s politics, not his appearance. “He spent the last year criticizing President Donald Trump from various concert stages. His current tour is like ‘No Kings’ central, a chance to bloviate on a nightly basis,” writes Toto. “If you’d rather hear him just sing, better luck next tour. Except at 76, how many tours does The Boss still have in him?”….Watch your back, Gavin Newsom: The Daily Signal has opened a California bureau and assigned three reporters and an editor to keep an eye on the Golden State Governor with presidential ambitions. The Daily Signal also has bureaus in Virginia and Ohio…Belated Happy Birthday: Apple turned 50 yesterday. I rank Apple’s iPhone as the most significant technological achievement in the last  half century. The Computer History Museum has an excellent online recap of Apple’s enormous contributions including the sleek MacBook laptop where my fingers dance across the keyboard every morning happily churning out this newsletter….If you keep reading, I’ll keep Righting. Howard