We began the week waiting, and we are ending the week waiting. All week long, rumors have leaked out about the status of the budget negotiations between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, with both sides spinning madly to impress their bases, but we end the week with no deal actually inked.

However, we may be close. At least, that's today's big leak. It seems like both sides have agreed to some topline numbers with various face-saving things thrown in so they can both claim at least a certain degree of victory. Whether this actually works or not is still an open question.

Members of both parties are doubtlessly going to howl when the details are publicly released, and then they'll accuse their own negotiators of "giving away the store." But others will accept the face-saving spin and push forward, most likely. That's usually the endgame for such sticky negotiations, at any rate.

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is now officially a candidate for president of the United States. He filed paperwork earlier today, and he will be making his campaign launch announcement in a fairly unconventional way (perhaps even as we write this) on Twitter (with Elon Musk). His entry into the race is not at all unexpected, and will have come as a surprise to precisely no one. He's essentially already been running since at least last year. But by announcing, DeSantis has now made it official -- the race for the Republican nomination is now a two-man race.

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Senator Tim Scott announced today that he is running to be Donald Trump's running mate. The veepstakes has begun!

[Perhaps I am being a bit too snarky. Allow me start over....]

Senator Tim Scott today announced his longshot bid for the Republican presidential nomination. The political media is paying more attention to Scott than some of the other GOP candidates, mostly because he has already raised over $20 million and will be able to run ads right up to the New Hampshire primary date. This means he'll have to at least be taken semi-seriously, but the reality of the situation is that the best Scott will likely be able to do is to get Trump to name him to the vice presidential spot on his ticket.

Scott is not alone in this endeavor, I should point out. Nikki Haley also seems to be in the running for Trump's veep slot. Others may join this effort, whether they run for president or not (South Dakota's Kristi Noem for one, and Kari Lake in Arizona certainly seems to be angling for it as well).

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With twelve more days left in the month of May, the debt ceiling follies continue unabated. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy just "paused" the negotiations with President Joe Biden, which was a rather pessimistic note to close out what had otherwise been a rather optimistic week. There is speculation that both sides are using this "pause" merely as a political signal to their respective bases -- to show that they are negotiating hard and not giving away the store. If this is true, negotiations will likely resume at some point this weekend. But it's anyone's guess whether they'll agree even on a framework (much less actual legislative text) any time soon.

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President Joe Biden really has no excuse for the conundrum he has created for himself in next year's early primaries. He should have understood from the start what the outcome would be, but he apparently didn't think things through enough. If he had a different history in politics he might have had a believable excuse, but he just doesn't.

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Let's make sure we all get this correct. Donald Trump is now technically not a "convicted rapist." He's not a convicted anything, because the verdict handed down against him this week was in civil (not criminal) court. And the jury balked at declaring that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll, but they did find Trump liable for sexually attacking her and defaming her publicly. To the tune of $5 million. It only took them about three hours to do so, meaning the case was pretty iron-clad to begin with. So Donald Trump is merely the first ex-president to be found liable of being a sexual predator rather than being an actual convicted rapist.

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Of all the reactions to last night's CNN town hall with Donald Trump, the most interesting came from Michael Fanone, a former D.C. police officer who was attacked and almost killed by the mob of violent insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. His take on Trump's CNN performance: "It's worse than I could have ever imagined. It's an absolute disaster. There's no way to fact-check this guy in real time. He's a volcano of bullshit."

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The first major television event of the 2024 presidential race will be held tonight, on CNN. The network is hosting a live town hall in New Hampshire with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins will moderate the event, which will also feature questions from New Hampshire Republicans and undecided voters. This isn't the first town hall event to feature a presidential candidate, but it will be the first one that draws a very wide audience, so it can be seen as the real kickoff to the campaign season.

CNN is already getting some grief for inviting Trump onto their network, but the alternative that some seem to prefer would be for all the major networks (both cable and broadcast) other than far-right propaganda outlets to shun Trump during the entire race. Which isn't going to happen -- nor should it. Trump is many things, to be sure, but he is currently leading all the polls of Republican voters -- by a lot. He regularly charts over 50 percent support, and his closest challenger struggles to even match half of Trump's support. Are the news networks really supposed to just ignore a candidate like that? Hardly. If Trump were polling at five percent, he'd be ignorable -- but not at 55 percent.

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In 1888, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a book of aphorisms which contained the following: "Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens. -- Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker." This can be translated into English as: "Out of the war-school of life. -- What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger." In a different book he wrote in the same year, Nietzsche refined the thought a bit, speaking of "nature's lucky strokes... among men," and saying of such lucky individuals: "He divines remedies for injuries; he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own advantage, that which does not kill him makes him stronger."

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President Joe Biden will not be attending the coronation of King Charles III tomorrow, which is entirely appropriate (although he is sending First Lady Dr. Jill Biden instead, out of respect). No U.S. president has ever attended a British coronation, and with good reason -- after all, we fought a whole war just so no American would ever have to show any sort of fealty to any King or Queen of England ever again. But even though Biden won't be there, the two men do share one notable similarity: they both waited all their lives -- decades and decades of it -- for the chance to sit at the head of their country. So it's pretty easy to see they do share how long the wait has been for both of them.

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