Next month, America will celebrate its 249th birthday on July 4th. But the rest of the world will be much more concerned with what happens five days later, on July 9th. That is the deadline for Donald Trump's 90-day "pause" in what he calls his "reciprocal tariffs" on the rest of the world. Either countries have a new trade deal in place with the U.S. by that date, or else steep tariffs will once again be imposed upon them.

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Today Donald Trump was asked whether he had made the decision to attack Iran's nuclear sites or not. He answered with perhaps the truest words he has ever spoken: "You don't seriously think I'm going to answer that question. You don't know that I'm going to even do it. You know, I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do." It's hard to disagree with that, really.

But the subject deserves more than just snark, since it is a serious decision Trump has to make -- and it would be an equally tough decision for any U.S. president to have to make. Entering the country into a war is always a serious decision, and it should be treated as such by all concerned.

The stakes are high. There are valid arguments to be made on both sides of the issue. Whatever Trump decides, it will come with some degree of risk -- both for the country and for him politically.

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Donald Trump bent to reality last week, issuing an order that amounts to a stunning turnaround on his "mass deportation" policy. Instead of rounding up every undocumented immigrant in sight everywhere, ICE will now back off on raiding farms, meatpacking plants, hotels, and restaurants. Because the reality of the situation is that if you removed all the undocumented immigrants from these industries, they would essentially grind to a halt. Which Trump has (thankfully) now finally realized.

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It has been a week of dangerous precedents being set -- and it's not over yet.

One precedent that didn't get much media attention (but which is truly disturbing) was Donald Trump giving a nakedly political speech to American soldiers in uniform, where he pre-screened the crowd for both looks and ideology. One memo sent out before Trump arrived specified: "No fat soldiers." Another stated: "if soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience, then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out."

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The world's richest man and the world's most powerful man got into an online fight yesterday, which began when Elon Musk tweeted out: "Donny Trump is a poopyhead!" -- to which Donald Trump immediately responded: "No YOU'RE the poopyhead Elon!!!"

Well, no. That's not actually how it happened. But it's not that far from the reality, sad to say.

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While I do realize that a very entertaining playground fight between the world's most prominent schoolboys is currently raging, I am going to exercise a monumental amount of restraint and not address the dustup between Elon Musk and Donald Trump today. Besides, by tomorrow, there'll probably be several more amusing developments to talk about, right?

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So there's a public gathering in Washington this week that aims to fix what's wrong with the Democratic Party. It is called "WelcomeFest" and is yet another effort to make the party "more moderate" (they talk of being "partisan centrists"), while admittedly trying to emulate the amount of energy from the progressive side of the party. One of the founders of the "Welcome Party" summed this up: "We respect the very robust and multifaceted effort on the progressive faction of the party over the last few years. They had a lot of clear coherency behind it, and there was a lot of action. We are essentially just trying to emulate that faction of the party." However, one has to wonder what they really mean when they talk of being centrists and moderates, since the lion's share of the funding behind the effort comes from Democratic deep-pocket donors, instead of being supported by any sort of authentic grassroots effort.

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Elon Musk is back in the news. He's upset over the Republican budget bill and he's having a hissy fit about it online. Musk seems destined to lose this battle, since by coming out against the bill he set himself at odds with Donald Trump -- and Trump is a lot more popular with the Republican base than Musk. On the other hand, Musk has an almost unlimited amount of money and he's quite willing to toss millions at political causes when he feels like it. So it's tough to really predict how any of this is going to play out.

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In the annals of warfare, at times new inventions completely revolutionize how wars are fought. The full list of these is long, so here are just a few prominent historical examples: gunpowder, the rifle cartridge (as opposed to musket balls), the machine gun, airplanes, and tanks. War-changing inventions don't always have to be offensive weapons -- radar would certainly qualify. In each case, however, the introduction of something new onto the battlefield has completely changed how wars are fought. Battleships had to give way to aircraft carriers. Before that, cavalry gave way to tanks. So it goes.

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This week, Wall Street figured out something about Donald Trump (that Vladimir Putin has known for quite a while now) and gave it a catchy name: "TACO." This stands for: "Trump Always Chickens Out."

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