Welcome back to Friday Talking Points! Let's see... anything big happen in the two weeks while we were away?

We're kidding, of course. The flood of sewage from Donald Trump's mouth was so pervasive, it was downright impossible to ignore it from anywhere on the planet. So last week we watched in fear as Trump got in a shoving match with Kim Jong Un, and this week we remained agape while Trump told us what he really feels about people who march with swastikas while screaming about Jews -- that they're "very fine people."

Hoo boy.

The most appropriate quote -- from inside the White House, mind you -- in reaction to Trump's impromptu press conference came from the Daily Beast:

"It was the president's decision to do this," another White House official (said) of Trump's free-wheeling at the press conference. Asked for a mini-review of Trump's press conference performance, the official would only respond, "clean-up on aisle Trump."

Brookings fellow Jamie Kirchick took the prize for best tweet in response to Trump: "When determining whether or not the president is a racist, I'll defer to the professional racists, who very much seem to think he is."

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Since President Donald Trump seems to be in such desperate need of some good advice, I thought today it'd be appropriate to offer up the following for his benefit, from two historic figures.

To begin with, we have none other than General Robert E. Lee -- whose statue in Charlottesville is at the heart of the current fight -- and who had some pretty specific words to say about those who would memorialize the so-called "Lost Cause." Lee wrote in August of 1865 to former governor of Virginia John Letcher, addressing what good citizens of the state should strive to do now that the war was over:

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So, America, are we tired of all that "winning" yet?

Yes, that was a facetious question, intended to point out that America is not so much tired of "winning" right now as it is increasingly tired of President Donald Trump's antics. Because his presidency just keeps right on hitting new lows, on a weekly basis (sometimes on a daily basis, in fact). Every time you think: "Well, he certainly can never top that one," he roars back to set the bar even lower, oftentimes with jaw-dropping impact.

The past few days has seen this cycle repeat once again. After some nuclear brinksmanship with North Korea and threatening Venezeula with military force, Trump turned to heal the racial divide in America. Well, no, he didn't. What he actually did was to pour a few gallons of gasoline on the fire, just to make it burn that much brighter.

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While I just finished watching President Donald Trump's rather extraordinary press conference today, it is going to take some time for me to process it before writing about it. So perhaps I'll get to it tomorrow, but for today I thought it was time for some light-hearted political fun. In short: a contest!

We haven't had one of these for awhile, but at this point I think everyone could use a distraction. The contest's rules are simple: pick the day when General John Kelly will exit his job as White House chief of staff. Bonus points are possible if you correctly pick the method of his exit (fired in a Trump rage, got so disgusted he had to go, caught in a compromising position with Russians/prostitutes/Ryan Lizza, etc.).

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President Donald Trump today finally acknowledged the root cause of the horrific terrorist attack in Charlottesville last week. He specifically called out neo-Nazis and white supremacists for the evil they truly represent. This is all to his credit, although it did take him an unconscionably long time to make such a statement. But there was still one word missing from his statement: terrorism.

Driving a car into a crowd of people with murderous intent solely for what those people believe is indeed terrorism. There simply is no other label that fits. Terrorism is the threat or the use of force or violence to achieve political goals. That's what this was, plain and simple. Nobody has any problem with labelling a car or truck attack terrorism when it happens in Europe by a fanatical Muslim, and nobody should shy away from using the label right here in America -- no matter what the ideology or political goals behind such an attack are.

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I know I said I wouldn't be doing live-blogging from Netroots Nation, but I have to at least file a general report as a sort of overview of my impressions of the convention. It's either that or just blow off writing anything until next Monday, so you have the choice of either reading what's going on here in Atlanta or instead spending more time stressing out about when the missiles might start flying (which everyone's been doing all week long, it appears). It's your choice, really. Just wanted to give fair warning before I begin.

Netroots is two-thirds over, at this point. Saturday will be the third of three days, but so far the biggest impression I've come away with is that the activist left is incredibly energized this particular year, and is working hard to change things for the better in the run-up to next year's midterm elections.

I believe this is the sixth time I've attended Netroots Nation, although my wife and I did not attend last year's convention. We got to attend the Democratic National Convention in 2016 instead, so it's been a while since I've experienced Netroots.

The most heartening thing I've seen so far is how unified the atmosphere is. I've been to Netroots in years following big election losses before, and some of these had a pervasive atmosphere of disappointment, if not outright depression. This is not the case this year at all, I'm happy to report, even though 2016 was the most dismal election loss Democrats have suffered in a long time. Instead of downcast attitudes, people have responded by energetically rededicating themselves to ushering in political change, and the overall feeling is actually one of optimism.

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So I take a few days off to do some tourist stuff, and suddenly we're almost at war with North Korea? I guess with Donald Trump running things you can't afford to ignore the news for even a few days.

Maybe it's just being on vacation, though, but for some reason I don't think the current crisis is really going to live up to the hype in the media. Even hotels in the backwoods still have cable television, so I have seen them going bonkers over the situation -- portraying it as the most serious international standoff since the Cuban missile crisis.

Somehow, I kind of doubt that is true, though. Perhaps it's just having had cable TV as my main news source for the past two days. I tend to pay much more attention at home to print and online news, and only sample broadcast television news just to see how the stories I've already read are being presented. While cable news is much more excitable, millions more Americans regularly get their information about the world and politics through broadcast news, so I have to at least pay attention to their spin, while mostly ignoring cable altogether.

Which is why I reached back to a very old Supertramp album title to headline this article. Crisis? Really? Well, maybe... but then again maybe not. North Korea, after all, issues bellicose statements towards us with regularity, and for the most part the United States (from the president on down) just largely ignores them. Such bellicosity is really intended for for the North Korean people, to keep them whipped into a state of perpetual frenzy over the supposed imminent attack from the U.S. (that never seems to materialize, but whatever). Watching even 30 seconds of the woman who regularly delivers such alarmist statements on North Korean state television (from just about any recent period of time) proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

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It is now August. The dog days of summer. In politics, this period is traditionally known as the "silly season." It's called that for a reason. With Congress gone from Washington all month, usually coupled with a presidential vacation, there is just not a lot of news for political commentators to comment upon. So they usually latch on to some incredibly silly story and then proceed to beat it into the ground. With nobody else around to make news, this soon turns into a vortex of silliness, with everyone trying to outdo each other pontificating on the seriousness of what, at heart, is pure balderdash.

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As time goes by, more and more elephants in Washington seem to be going rogue. By this, we mean that resistance to Donald Trump is growing... within the Republican Party. Just last week, three GOP senators (Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain) denied Trump his sought-after "repeal and replace Obamacare" bill. Senator David Perdue from Georgia summed it up as: "We had three chairmen who went rogue on the Republican caucus and cost us this vote." Since then, other elephants have been going rogue at an increasing rate.

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President Donald Trump finally got a major piece of legislation to sign. However, he wasn't too thrilled about it and I doubt he'll be bragging much about it in the future. Because while it could be called a rather stunning bipartisan congressional victory, it certainly wasn't any sort of political victory for Trump. Unless you count "unifying Congress... against Trump," which I kind of doubt he would.

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