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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I realize it is the wrong season for this sports metaphor, but it now seems that the most likely outcome of the debt ceiling showdown is going to include a punt. For any long-term solution to emerge, there's going to have to first be a short-term solution that kicks the ball down the field a bit.

It is now crunch time. Tomorrow, President Biden will meet with the four congressional leaders (the leaders of both parties in both houses) for the first time in months. They are miles apart on what they want to see happen, and nobody really expects a huge breakthrough compromise to emerge from tomorrow's meeting. But the drop-dead date has been moved up to (possibly) the first of June, which only leaves a little more than three weeks to do something, or else the United States is going to default on its debt for the first time in history.

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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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It is a rare day when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nikki Haley agree on anything, but both of them are now on the same page on one particular subject -- that Senator Dianne Feinstein needs to resign her Senate seat if she can no longer do the required duties. I share this view, personally, and my opinion is perhaps more relevant than either of theirs, since I am an actual constituent of Feinstein's. California deserves to have two senators that are able to show up and cast votes and represent the most-populous state in the United States Senate. Feinstein hasn't been able to make it to Washington since February, and every week that goes by is another week of delay for many of President Biden's judicial nominees. If Feinstein weren't a crucial vote on the committee responsible for vetting such nominees, perhaps I wouldn't feel as strongly about it, but she is -- and the Republicans have blocked Chuck Schumer from replacing her on that committee. Feinstein has already announced she will not be running for re-election next year, so asking her to step down now isn't as contentious (or as insulting) as it might seem.

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This is the big White House Correspondents Dinner weekend, but somehow our invitation was either lost in the mail or otherwise overlooked. So we'll have to watch the clips later, like everyone else.

This was a pretty momentous week in politics, as President Joe Biden announced his re-election bid, Donald Trump's rape court case got underway, and Kevin McCarthy was actually able to corral his various factions to vote for a bill that Democrats will use as fodder in the upcoming congressional campaigns. So let's get right to it all, shall we?

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Remember when conservatives decried "cancel culture"? It wasn't actually that long ago that they regularly did so. The phrase originally meant, essentially: paying a price for offensive behavior. Anyone (usually celebrities) caught saying anything deemed beyond the pale was subject to harsh criticism (usually online) and efforts were made to ostracize or shun them -- which usually included pressuring their employers to fire them or otherwise exacting an economic price from the offender. Republicans, led by Donald Trump and others, began denouncing such efforts as somehow being unacceptible, under the very Trumpian ideal that nobody should ever have to pay a price for anything, no matter how offensive. Hadn't Trump shrugged off multiple scandals that would have destroyed any previous politician and gotten elected anyway? So everyone else should be just as free to offend anyone they pleased without ever having to answer for the offense in any way.

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It looks like it's going to be a very cable news sort of week this week. Today two prominent cable news personalities lost their jobs, for different reasons. Most of the astonishment this generated in the media world is likely to be overshadowed tomorrow by two developments in the presidential race. President Joe Biden is rumored to have picked tomorrow to formally announce his candidacy for re-election -- four years to the day after he announced last time. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is going to go on trial in New York -- which could prove to be the first of many times he'll have to defend himself in court. So it's going to be a pretty momentous week all around on cable news, that's my guess at any rate.

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We admit using that subtitle dates us in a way, since we are indeed old enough to remember the popular song of the same name -- but we couldn't resist, since this week started out with Fox News caving at the last possible moment as a civil defamation trial was set to begin against them. First the trial was delayed a day and then came the bombshell news that Fox had settled with Dominion Voting Systems for a jaw-dropping $787.5 million. To state the patently obvious, you don't settle a case you fully expect to win. Fox knew it was in danger of not just losing the case (Dominion had sued for $1.6 billion, a little more than twice what Fox settled for) but having the network's dirty laundry exposed in even more painful fashion than it already had been (through releases of internal communications between executives and network personalities that were already embarrassing enough). Fox was indeed on the run, to the tune of over three-quarters of a billion dollars.

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There have been two legal developments this week which might go a long way toward proving that creating a business model out of peddling lies to unsuspecting people is maybe not the best plan of action -- unless, of course, your name happens to be Donald Trump. Trump is the king of all election-denying grifters, and so far nobody's scratched his Teflon coating -- although even Trump may eventually have to face some sort of music for monetizing falsehoods. One of the things the special counsel investigating Trump is reportedly looking into is how Trump made pitches to donors big and small between the 2020 election and January 6th. Trump raised a lot of money promising that it would be used to fight to "Stop The Steal," but he never actually created such a fund. But for the time being at least, Trump has been able to skate away from any consequences for gaslighting his supporters. This is now no longer true for others who jumped on the stolen-election bandwagon. Both Fox News and Mike Lindell are now having to pay for their lies, and this could just be the start of both of them -- and others -- having to cough up to pay for the damage they have done.

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has finally made his opening bid, in the showdown with President Joe Biden (and the Democratic Senate) over raising the nation's debt ceiling. Today McCarthy released a proposal he thinks he will get 218 Republican votes and actually pass the House. It remains to be seen whether that's even true or not -- a vote won't be held until at least next week, and to say that not everyone in the GOP caucus is on board yet is an understatement. But at least he's finally put some numbers down on paper for all to see.

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