Donald Trump just hosted the leader of China on a state visit, and in the end it turned out to be a total flop. No big announcements happened, no big deals were cut, in fact nothing much of anything took place, other than Trump trying desperately to impress Xi Jinping with his new heliport and all the other laughable modifications he's done to the White House. Xi wasn't notably impressed (of course), but he did promise two more giant pandas would be heading to America soon, so that's something, at the very least.

The truly epic part of this failure at summitry was that none of it was caught on the television cameras. Which must have thoroughly cheesed off Trump, for whom an event that doesn't appear on television simply does not exist.

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When the American economy sours, voters react. Usually, this means punishing whichever party is in power in Washington in a generalized "throw the bums out" sort of way. The voters see that the people running the country have screwed things up, so they decide to give the other team a chance at making things better. However, in most such cases there is no easily-identifiable cause of the economy going south. The voters just feel a sort of free-floating malaise and they turn on the party in power to show their general disapproval. It is actually rare that there is an easily-identifiable event or policy choice that people can point to and say: "This is why the economy sucks right now."

We are in one of those times now. There is a clear cause and effect, and it is so obvious and simple that virtually all voters have already made the basic connection. Donald Trump's war of choice with Iran sent gasoline prices through the roof. It's a pretty basic equation: "Trump's war led to sky-high gas prices." You can draw further inferences as well, although not everybody follows it through all the way: "Trump's war led to sky-high gas prices and all-time record high diesel prices which led to food prices going up and prices for everything shipped by train or truck going up which led to inflation going up and everything costing more and more."

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That headline, while meant to be amusing, is contemplating a rather broad definition of the historical political metaphor. The term "lame duck" actually predates its use in politics (according to Wikipedia), and was first used in a political sense in America in 1863. Political cartoons depicting lame ducks date back over a century. Used in the traditional sense, the term refers to the period between when politicians lose their bid for re-election and when the new Congress and/or president is sworn into office. The congressional session after the November elections but before the new Congress is sworn in has long been known as the "lame-duck Congress."

But the term can also be used to describe a politician who is barred from even running for re-election by term limits. In this case, the timing of when the lame-duck period begins is a lot looser. Some second-term presidents are labelled lame ducks at the very start of their second term, for instance, others get the label applied after the midterm congressional elections take place, and some skate all the way to the final few months of their administration (the traditional congressional lame-duck period) before having the term used about them.

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Donald Trump just signed a new "deal" (or maybe: a "new" deal) with Denmark and Greenland. The scare quotes are there to signify the fact that this really isn't a new deal at all -- it mostly just reaffirms the existing agreement that has been in place since the dawn of the Cold War, back in 1951. But the leaders of Greenland and Denmark were smart enough to know that repackaging what was already in place would soothe Trump's bruised ego and gave him a performative signing ceremony he could brag about. This shows the rest of the world that coddling Trump the way you would a small infant is often the best path forward for other world leaders.

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The 2026 midterm elections are going to answer several open political questions, for the next few years at least. The answers to these questions might wind up being murky -- with some outcomes and evidence pointing one way, and some the exact opposite. The narrative of this election hasn't been defined by the pundits as of yet, but likely will be after the vote-counting is done. What is the conventional wisdom going to be, come mid-November? That will all depend on the results, of course, but for the moment we can at least identify some of the big questions.

The most interesting questions are all about the political landscape itself and how the nominees from both parties will do with the voters. Will Democratic progressives (and even Democratic Socialists) prove that they can indeed be electable in places that are not big Democratic stronghold cities or districts that are already deep blue? Will there be a "blue wave," and how high up the beach will it get? And will all the gerrymandering the Republicans did wind up helping them or will some of it actually backfire on them?

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This week, Donald Trump addressed the fears many are having over artificial intelligence by sending out a message: "The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!"

Many people's reaction to this was simple: "OK, so it's official then... we're screwed." Plenty of other scathing comments appeared online, with our favorite being: "You didn't know there was a 'b' in the word dumb."

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Today was another day where I just had too much to do in real life to devote the time to writing a new column, so I will begin with my apology for the interruption in service.

I looked back for a column to run again today, and found one I wrote at the very start (written only a few days in) of Trump's war of choice with Iran. I find it has stood the test of time fairly well (especially the part about it devolving into a war of attrition), which is why I decided to run it again today, just for a look back.

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This week, the Supreme Court actually did the right thing. That statement shouldn't be as astonishing as it is, but these days it is a rather rare thing to behold. The justices ruled that Donald Trump's scheme to hand the U.S. Postal Service extraordinary powers to determine which mail-in ballots were acceptable and which were not was unconstitutional and therefore could not be implemented before this year's midterm elections (which are roughly a month and a half away).

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There is no better example of the maxim "Everything Trump touches dies" (or just "ETTD") than the ongoing saga of the once-proud John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts. Today, the board -- chaired by none other than Donald Trump himself -- voted to close the Kennedy Center indefinitely, because those meanie judges won't let Trump slap his name on the outside of the building. Trump's planetary-sized ego won't rest until everything he sees in Washington D.C. has been renamed to honor him, plain and simple. So the likely outcome (barring other judicial interventions) is that the Kennedy Center will remain dark until the next president is sworn into office. Because ETTD.

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Did this year's "October surprise" happen early? I have been pondering this question all weekend, after several major developments have taken place in the increasingly regional war in the Middle East. Could these developments affect the American midterm elections in the way that traditional last-minute political "surprises" have in the final weeks before the public votes? So far, the answers seem unclear, but the potential certainly exists, even though few have commented on this possibility.

The biggest story the mainstream media is mostly ignoring right now is the jaw-dropping spike in the price of diesel fuel over the past week. Last week, the average nationwide U.S. price hit a new all-time high, hitting $5.85 per gallon. The media mostly yawned at this news. Since then -- all in the space of a single week, mind you -- the price is now up to $6.23 per gallon. That's a hike of roughly 40 cents in a very short period of time, and there are no signs that it will abate any time soon.

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