Welcome back to TACO Tuesday! Once again, "Trump Always Chickens Out" rules the day....

I shouldn't be so snarky, I suppose. Because in this case, Donald Trump chickening out is a very good thing indeed. As the world waited with baited breath to see whether the two-week ceasefire between Iran and the United States was going to end without a deal being reached between the two countries -- which would have assumably meant Trump making good on his threats to bomb every power plant and bridge in Iran -- Trump put out the following message:

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I think my zone is now officially flooded.

I don't quite know how else to put it, really. Trying to keep up with political events when every headline seems like it could be just as easily have read "More Chaos Ensues" is a downright daunting task. Donald Trump's "flood the zone" strategy is tough enough to keep up with as it is, but at this point it is almost impossible to comment intelligently about any of the most impactful stories of the day because of the constant contradictions and incoherence emanating from the White House.

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Last week, Donald Trump threatened to wipe out "a whole civilization" which has been around for thousands of years. This week, he not only picked a fight with the Pope, but for good measure also posted a picture of himself depicted as Jesus Christ. That Nobel Peace Prize should be a cinch for him now, right?

The best commentary we heard about all of this came from Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat from California. As an aside in an eye-opening comment she made to a reporter (more on this in a bit), she called Trump, "this dude, Dr. Jesus...." Which is where our headline today came from (to give credit where it is due).

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This is going to be a disjointed sort of column, I have to warn everyone in advance. It will be nothing more than a few random thoughts strung together on one subject, in no particular order. This is because my brain is rather frazzled right now, here at the end of tax season.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, the only things that are certain in life are death and taxes. Taxes are what we pay to keep society humming along and providing governmental services to its citizens. That's the basic theory, at any rate.

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There have been numerous developments since the last time I wrote about Trump's war of choice in Iran, so I decided today would be a good day to review them all. First and foremost, the two-week ceasefire is now half over, and as originally scheduled is due to expire next Tuesday.

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.

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Human beings set a record this week for reaching the farthest distance away from Earth ever, as Artemis II looped around the far side of the moon. Hopefully the astronauts will safely splash down in the Pacific Ocean later today. The whole space mission was a bright spot in the news this week -- in a week that sorely needed some positivity.

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.

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The citizens of the Republic of Ireland have a saying about what happened to them after their successful revolution over 100 years ago. They say: "We won the war, but we lost the peace." Without getting into the details too much, what they mean by this is that after they had won their war of independence against Great Britain, they were still forced to relinquish six of Ireland's counties (which would remain under British control). This situation still exists -- it is how the country of Northern Ireland was created.

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.

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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's pretty clear by now that Donald Trump sees war as nothing more than a video game. Having avoided going to war as a young man (by paying a doctor to lie about his non-existent "bone spurs"), he has no concept of what a real war is like. Nor is he interested in finding out. His daily briefings reportedly include a two-minute video of American bombs and missiles "blowin' stuff up." And he has no overall plan or even any clear objectives left in his war of choice against Iran. He's just making it up as he goes along, while attempting to gaslight the country to believe his own warped reality.

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