High-ranking representatives from the United States and Iran sat across a table from each other in Pakistan last weekend, which is notable since it is the first such direct bilateral talks between the two countries since the 1979 revolution. Vice President JD Vance led the American delegation. It was apparently just one long marathon of a day of talks. The two sides reportedly sat down for over 20 hours straight, but at the end neither one had anything to announce and everyone flew home.

This week also saw the president of the United States threatening to commit war crimes in his war of choice with Iran. Even this wasn't enough for him, as he quickly moved on to threatening crimes against humanity. Thankfully, neither actually happened, because he chickened out at the last minute.

It's pretty obvious why I was reminded of this saying this week. The current situation is about as murky as can be, but it does seem as though Donald Trump could be considering a similar outcome. After militarily winning the war with Iran, the U.S. might just wind up "losing the peace," at least to some extent or another.

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.

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!"

All the questions, worries, fears, and concerns that Americans had before Trump spoke still exist. None have been answered or assuaged or explained at all. So while I had intended to spend time analyzing Trump's speech today, there's just no "there there" to analyze. It was a giant nothingburger of a speech.

Personally, I think it'd be amusing if Trump took to the airwaves tonight and boldly announced he was resigning the office of the presidency at midnight tonight. Then just before the clock struck twelve, he could put out a statement on social media saying: "April Fool's! Gotcha!"

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.

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.

Donald Trump, our toddler-in-chief, is in the midst of one of those incandescent tantrums. His war isn't going anywhere near as well as he thought it would, and the fact that Iran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz is making him apoplectic with rage. He is now demanding that other countries of the world save him from his missteps, by sending their warships into the Strait to escort oil tankers and other ships. But he's finding that the rest of the world is not exactly leaping to help him out, which shouldn't come of much of a surprise to anyone, considering how he has treated all of America's closest allies up to this point.

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.

Sorry, but we just couldn't resist. Trump was finally forced to fire one of the members of his cabinet, and it just couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Which is also pure snark, of course, because Noem was one of the most odious members of Team Trump by far (which is saying a lot). She even got yelled at this week by a fellow Republican for the heartlessness of the story she included in the book she wrote about herself, where she took the family dog out to the gravel pit and shot him dead. For good measure, she also shot a goat. Because of "leadership," or something.

That sounds cynical, but it's not even the most cynical take on things. Hardcore cynics point out that Trump seems to launch his military attacks whenever the Epstein files begin to get some traction in the news again. We're not sure if we totally buy into that thinking, but it is worth considering, seeing how Trump does almost everything for the stupidest of reasons.

Was that too snarky? Sorry, let me start over.... Democrats faced with the problem of how to counter Trump's speech Tuesday night came up with several ideas for the best way to do so. Should they just not attend? Should they protest in the chamber itself, either visually (with signs and buttons), audibly (by shouting at Trump), or by silently standing up and walking out at some point? Should they hold an alternative event (or two) to counterprogram what was going on inside the Capitol? Should they just hold a snowball fight on the National Mall? Well, they decided "all of the above!" (except for that last one -- there was no snowball fight, I just had to throw that in there for amusement).

When Roman emperors ran out of ideas, they promised bread and circuses. Trump's speech was full of circuses, including a lengthy celebration of the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team. But he's no Roman emperor: He made a point of reminding the American people that his administration is providing a lot less food to the poor (having "lifted" 2.4 million people off food stamps).

[Just to give credit where it is due....]

Sadly, that's not even overstating what Trump will likely say. If anything, it might actually understate it. Today, Trump gave us all a little teaser, which was exactly what you'd expect from him:

Personally, I am leaning towards: "It was all performative; it was just Trump making sure that all eyes were on him during the Davos conference at the expense of all others," since this fits in perfectly with his own planet-sized ego. He caused a crisis so everyone would freak out, then he "solved" the crisis by backing down. In the meantime, the world's eyes were upon him and his every utterance -- which is exactly what he wanted.

Looking back, the most notable thing about Trump's first year back was how he has thrown himself fully into the Silicon Valley maxim to "move fast and break things." Trump has indeed moved fast, and he has indeed broken many things -- some of which will take a very long time to put back together and some of which may just stay broken forever.

Our president's crazy
Did you hear what he said?

-- The Talking Heads
"Making Flippy Floppy"

It seems like the time has now come to at least begin the discussions about invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to remove a president who has, quite obviously, lost all touch with reality.

Some people, when they reach an advanced age, enter into a period some mental health experts call a "second childhood." This is where they lose all adult sense of what is right, wrong, and allowable, and start behaving like a cranky toddler once again. However, it's not accurate to say that Donald Trump is entering into a period of second childhood himself -- but only for the reason that he never seems to have left this cranky toddler phase behind at any point during his entire life. With him, there's nothing "second" about it, in other words.

(Sigh.)

The defining feature of this past year has been -- just like it was in his first term -- the continuing cycle of being so aghast at Trump's planet-sized ego, flailing insecurities, and toddler-grade tantrums and thinking to oneself: "Well, it surely can't get any worse than this!" -- only to wake up the next morning, read the headlines, and find out that yep, it sure can get worse, in ways you would never have imagined in a million years, pre-Trump.

In a twist to its tradition of tracking an animated version of Santa Claus' sleigh and reindeer as he flies around the globe on December 24, the military is adding the animated fighter plane escort to give a realistic feel to the popular feature, said a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

This article is mind-bendingly long enough, so we're not going to bother with any other introductory words at all. Instead, let's just get right to the awards, shall we?

Also as always, it is long. Really, really, insanely long. You have been warned!

And also as always, we'll be back again next Friday for [Part 2].

Usually, at this time of year, I try to come up with frightful tales of horror for both the left and right sides of the political divide -- which I attempt to make both humorous and also so far-fetched that they're ridiculously unbelievable. The "scare factor" is tempered by the "Oh, that could never actually happen" factor, to put it another way.

These are indeed scary times we live in. And it would be impossible for me to try to construct a nightmarish scenario for those on the left that is any more frightful than what we are living through now.

But there is another war still raging, and there are developments with regard to Ukraine and Russia that are worth discussing, so while everyone else is reporting on the Middle East I thought it'd be a good time to take a look at where things stand.

Our subtitle this week is meant to honor the passing of Rick Davies, one of the founding members of the musical group Supertramp, who passed away less than two weeks ago. In one of their biggest hits ("The Logical Song"), one lyric seems to sum up where we now stand as a nation:

What should have been the political story of the week is also largely being ignored by the media as well. Vladimir Putin launched almost 20 drones into Polish airspace, which is a serious escalation since it's hard not to call this an act of war. The drones reportedly weren't armed with explosives, and Russia isn't taking any responsibility; but even so, invading another country's airspace is still a hostile act. Especially when that country is a member of NATO.

Doing so is pretty easy, since you can connect all sorts of dots to it: A soft jobs market. Inflation rising. Hamburger prices up. Electricity prices way up. Trump's tariff war, which has created a "Trump tax" on a whole bunch of products. Trump took hold of an economy that had achieved a "soft landing," and now he's driving us all right into a ditch. Everything he does seems to make things worse. See how easy that is to do?

While Trump has been cheerfully optimistic in his statements, the Europeans seem a lot more cautious and guarded in their outlook. Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, though, don't exactly seem filled with any of this happy spirit. In fact, Russia keeps contradicting what Trump and the rest of them are claiming has been accomplished.

As I write this, the summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has just begun. The two leaders met on the tarmac in a staged display of pomp, complete with red carpets and a shared limo ride to the building where the meetings will take place. Trump even applauded as Putin approached him, which is notable mostly for the difference in how Trump is treating Putin today and how he treated Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he visited the White House earlier this year (which was disgraceful, to say the least).

That, of course, didn't happen. Here we are more than 200 days in to Trump's second term, and the war rages on.

Donald Trump likes to see himself as a strongman -- a real "tough guy." But what we've seen is that he is at heart no more than a bully who immediately backs down when confronted with a truly strong opponent. Vladimir Putin is fully aware of this fact. Which all sets the stage for their summit meeting this Friday in Alaska.

You know, I'm going to see Putin. I'm going to Russia on Friday.

[Friday, dateline Alaska. Donald Trump emerges from his meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin and takes the podium:]

I am pleased to announce that President Putin and I have made a deal. Part of it covers Ukraine, which I will get to in a little bit. But here's the big news -- I have agreed to sell back to Russia all of the state of Alaska above the Arctic Circle. Not a lot of people know this, but Russia actually owned all of Alaska a while ago. That's right! The land we're standing on right now was actually part of Russia -- who knew?

We'll get to them in a moment, but what's more interesting is the dog that didn't bark today. Russia was supposed to have a "10-day deadline" to end its invasion of Ukraine, and steep tariffs were supposed to be slapped on them if Vladimir Putin hadn't manage to do so by today. However, nary a headline is talking about the tariffs that were supposed to appear, because once again Putin played Trump like a violin.

The most recent glaring example of this is how Russia has (up to this point) been declared exempt from Trump's global trade war. Trump has been all over the map with his tariff threats, but one part of it has remained consistent: a 10 percent tariff on all countries, no matter what. This initially included every country Team Trump could find on a map -- including one solely populated by penguins -- but not Russia.