Today the entire world is waiting to see whether the ceasefire announced last night with Iran is going to prove to be meaningful and lasting or not. So far it seems to be shaky, at best. Will the Strait of Hormuz reopen to oil tankers or not? Is Israel going to undermine the ceasefire? Only time will tell, which is why we're going to wait to see whether this endures or not before commenting at length on it.

Instead, we'd like to focus today on some good news for Democrats. Elections last night in Georgia and Wisconsin brought further proof that the Democratic Party has the wind at their backs heading into this year's midterm election season. As Politico put it, "Democrats just had one of their best election nights since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Again." That pretty much sums up the shift that has been happening ever since Trump took office.

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The race to see who will be California's next governor has had some big news break over the past few days, and at least one of these developments may prove to be a real earthquake (that's my mandatory "California earthquake" reference -- I thought I'd get it out of the way right here at the start).

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It was a very busy week in politics and we've got a lot to get to, but let's start out on a happy note for once, shall we? NASA's Artemis II mission is on its way to circle the moon, the first time humans have done so in over 50 years. So check out some awesome photos the astronauts took of Earth, including one that shows some Northern Lights (at the very edge of image). Out of this world! Something America can be proud of (during a time when that is rare indeed)....

Speaking of things quickly rocketing upward, this week the average national price of a gallon of gasoline blew through the "four bucks a gallon" milestone and hit $4.10 today. To which we can only say: "Ouch!"

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Maybe we need a new word for the way Donald Trump seems to be running the country: "chaocracy." Rule by chaos. The "Madman Theory" writ large. Nobody has any clue what's going to happen next, from Trump himself all the way down to average Americans and the rest of the world.

Of course, this has always been Donald Trump's modus operandi to some extent, but it is much more apparent now that we're in what seems to be a prolonged war. Trump is now attempting a feint in this war, but nobody's really sure what is the feint and what will become reality in the next few weeks. Trump himself probably doesn't know, at this point.

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In all sorts of ways, Donald Trump is getting some very bad numbers these days. Perhaps this has something to do with his newfound eagerness to somehow quickly end his war of choice in Iran? One can only speculate....

Trump's numbers are bad and they just keep right on coming. Within a few weeks, we will get new official inflation numbers which will reflect at least the first few weeks of Trump's War, when the price of gasoline started to skyrocket. And just today, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development put out their new estimates, which aren't good. The O.E.C.D. is now predicting that the inflation rate in America will average out to a whopping 4.2 percent this year -- over a full percentage point up from their last forecast. So it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see the official U.S. inflation number climb well above three percent in the March numbers, and it also won't be a surprise if they top four percent by next month, either.

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The ongoing partial government shutdown is about to break the record for the longest government shutdown in history. It affects only the Department of Homeland Security, which has limited the shutdown's visibility to the average American (in comparison to previous wider-scale shutdowns), but that has been changing over the past few weeks. The Transportation Security Administration is now publicly bearing the brunt of the shutdown, as T.S.A. agents at airports are increasingly deciding not to go to work (some of them can't even afford the gas to get there) or just to quit altogether. This has increased wait times at certain airports, which the media picked up on and has been featuring nightly on the news.

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Donald Trump seems to be determined to break as many campaign promises as he possibly can, in the shortest period of time possible. Conveniently (for Democrats), he is doing all of this right at the start of the midterm campaign season, as the first states conduct their primaries. This seems like a rather spectacular way to commit political suicide, but then again Trump is a master at avoiding consequences, so who really knows how it will all play out?

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In assessing how Donald Trump's war of choice is proceeding, we turn once again to the metric most Americans are using as their chief measurement: the average nationwide price of a gallon of gasoline now stands at $3.91. That is up $1.16 from the mid-January lowpoint of this year, and it is up 97 cents from the day before the bombing started. It is also only nine cents away from the psychological "four bucks a gallon" milestone (which the media is likely to prominently feature, when we do hit it). And currently, there is absolutely no end in sight to the high prices -- which still have yet to peak.

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After two weeks of war with Iran, gas prices in America have now reached a national average of $3.65 per gallon. That is 71 cents higher than they were before Donald Trump started this war, and 90 cents higher than the average was in mid-January. And prices continue to climb -- oil is now trading worldwide at over $100 per barrel.

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What if they held a government shutdown and nobody noticed?

That is admittedly a facetious way to put things, but the phrase has been popping into my mind over the past month. Democrats in Congress have partially shut the federal government down, but the issue has all but disappeared from the news, even though the shutdown is now about to enter its second month. There has been no progress whatsoever on any sort of deal or compromise, but the whole thing isn't being treated as any sort of crisis or emergency at all.

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