I have decided that today is a fine day to play hooky.

I apologize for this, but given the niceness of the summer day here and the choice between enjoying it fully and writing a very snarky column, I chose the former. What I would have written about was the gleeful schadenfreude those of us who live in the reality-based world have been feeling at watching those who live in the MAGA world absolutely melt down over the revelation that one of their favorite conspiracy theories has turned out to be just that -- not based in anything other than feverish swamp dreams.

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That headline is somewhat confusing, since it is not actually "Taco Tuesday," but instead merely the day which followed "TACO Monday." The latter, of course, refers to the neologism "Trump Always Chickens Out," which was created to describe exactly what took place yesterday. But it is also applicable to a different foreign policy stance (or "crouch," more like) that Donald Trump has been taking, which he is now threatening to change (but probably won't).

Way back on the day after April Fool's Day, Trump unveiled his "reciprocal tariffs" on the world. Wall Street immediately freaked out, and a week later Trump was forced to put a "pause" on the implementation of such tariffs. This was the original chickening out that gave rise to the new term.

Trump stated that the high tariff rates (which were figured on a completely arbitrary basis) would not go into effect for 90 days. Today, those 90 days are up. Throughout this period, Trump and the White House have been routinely promising an avalanche of trade deals will be announced -- real soon now! "We'll have 90 deals in 90 days," was the main talking point, although Trump at times boasted that they'd been talking to "over 200 countries" -- which is rather impressive, since 200 independent countries do not actually exist on this planet. Either way, big deals were coming! Maybe next week, who knows? Over and over again this refrain was repeated: lotsa deals, you betcha, any day now! Stay tuned!

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Is Elon Musk serious? That question, of course, can be read two ways. The first is sarcastically, as in: "Are you serious?!?" -- which conveys the same concept as stating: "You cannot be serious!" The second way is non-sarcastically, as in wondering: "Is Elon Musk truly serious about starting up his own third political party?" And the easy answer to that is: "Who knows? This is Elon Musk we are talking about, after all."

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Program Notes:

First, as mentioned last week, there will (obviously) be no new Friday Talking Points column today. These will resume next week, though, never fear!

Secondly, you'll have to take my word for this but I had fully intended to write a new column today examining an event which just had its 250th anniversary: the Battle of Bunker Hill. My reason for doing so was obviously spurred by the anniversary, but then it slipped my mind and I missed the actual date (June 17th), so I thought I might squeeze it belatedly in as an Independence Day column.

Unfortunately, I cannot locate the book I was going to use as a reference. I spent a goodly amount of time searching for it today, but even though I had re-read it only a month or so ago I cannot locate it. Right now I am blaming the cat, who may have hidden it somewhere, but in reality it is probably just the fault of my rather dismal filing system for books (which often get misplaced for years at a time, I sheepishly admit). Without this resource, I cannot write the article I really wanted to, so I must postpone it for a later date, with the promise that when I do find the missing tome, I will indeed write the column I have in mind.

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So Donald Trump just got a big political win, as the House Republicans held their collective noses and voted for the Senate version of their budget bill today, which will allow Trump to hold his Independence Day signing ceremony on schedule. This is a momentous development, and in fact it might wind up being the defining issue for the midterm elections next year. Democrats know this and are already planning on politically capitalizing on the worst aspects of the bill.

What is going to happen next will be a messaging battle. Which side frames the issue more convincingly in the public eye will have a decided edge heading into the midterm election season. And for once, it seems like the Democrats already have the upper hand.

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It's been another day in legislative Limbo, as I continually check for updates on what is going on with the House Republicans. Will they manage to strongarm enough members into voting for the Senate's version of their budget bill, or will Donald Trump miss out on his planned big Independence Day signing ceremony? Stay tuned!

(Sigh.) It's been that sort of day.

So while I could have written my own take on all the backroom arm-twistings that are happening once again, instead I decided that whenever the issue is resolved (which could easily slip into tomorrow) such musings would already be old and stale and not worth reading.

Instead, we're taking an early holiday day and running one of our traditional July columns once again. Because we certainly hope everyone is celebrating Independence Day today, as John Adams predicted lo those many years ago.

Originally published July 2nd, 2012

Happy Second of July, everyone! Happy Independence Day!

Now, you may be thinking: "Has Chris gone bonkers? Why is he jumping the gun, two days early?" The answers to these important queries are: No, Chris has not gone any more bonkers than usual; and, in fact, the rest of you are celebrating a fictitious event on a fictitious anniversary date. So there.

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Cue the Moby Dick jokes....

Senator Lisa Murkowski was convinced at the last minute to become the deciding vote for the Republican budget by the inclusion of a big tax break for (are you sitting down?) whaling captains. No, really -- whaling captains. As I said, the jokes really just write themselves on this one. Democrats instantly came up with two catchy names for all the Alaska-specific pork Murkowski extracted from her fellow Republicans: the Kodiak Kickback, or the Polar Payoff.

Immediately after her vote, Murkowski cried some crocodile tears both for herself and for the Americans who don't happen to live in Alaska, while desperately trying to justify her vote to reporters. She bemoaned how hard the past few days have been for her, and what an "agonizing" ordeal it was for her to get to the point where she could vote to kick 12 million people off of Medicaid.

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In Washington, all eyes are on the Senate today. They are currently going through the procedure known as "vote-a-rama" (which is right up there with the "Byrd bath" when it comes to cutesy-poo terms for legislative activity). The vote-a-rama is taking place on the Republican budget bill (which is not cutesy at all, because it is filled with poo).

Democrats are pretty united in their opposition to the entire budget. Two Republicans have indicated they will also be a "No" vote (Thom Tillis and Rand Paul), which means the bill can only lose one more GOP vote and still pass (with the vice president's tie-breaking vote).

My prediction is that it will pass today, and that even if Lisa Murkowski decides to vote against it, Susan Collins will (as usual) cave to the intraparty pressure and vote for it. That would all be about par for the course, really.

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It's not exactly front-and-center in the news, but Republicans have entered a budgetary crunch time in a big way. The outcome is going to be extremely significant to hundreds of millions of Americans, but reporting on it is time-consuming and detail-oriented, so it's a lot easier to just chase whatever shiny object Donald Trump trots out for the press instead.

But perhaps we're being too harsh. After all, the process itself is a maddening one for all concerned. Threats of "No" votes are issued, backroom deals are made, things get ruled out of bounds, hasty rewriting takes place, more threats are issued, more arm-twisting happens behind closed doors, and eventually something gets cobbled together that no one person has the time to read all the way through before it is voted on. The bill is dragged over the finish line and then the whole process happens all over again in the other house of Congress, until everyone is exhausted and just votes for whatever the heck is currently in the bill and they send it along to the president. It's only after the dust settles that anyone bothers to really dig in to the text and report on what it will all mean to America. This process happens pretty much the same way no matter which party is in control, it is worth pointing out.

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There will be no new column today, sorry. The demands of life away from the keyboard intervened, so I had to spend the day running various errands that had been backing up on me. My apologies for the interruption in service, but we will be back again tomorrow for our Friday column, never fear!

Oh, which reminds me -- next Friday will also be a vacation day here, as the nation celebrates its 249th birthday on July 4th.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant